One Nation Under Gods, and Mitt Romney, over before it began
A few months ago the buzz around governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts as a candidate for 2008 began to build. You can read a long profile in The Atlantic from September, or this shorter more politically oriented one in The Weekly Standard dating from last June. Romney is in some ways a Republican “dream candidate.” Romeny looks presidential, has had a very successful business career, “saved” the Salt Lake City Olympics, and seems to be able to be all things to all people politically (ie; moderate or conservative). But as this Amy Sullivan piece in The Washington Monthly points out Romney is going to run into the “Mormon” problem at some point.
What is the “Mormon” problem? Most of you likely have little familiarity with Mormons and Mormonism aside from seeing missionaries around the neighborhood or reading about polygamy in your high school history books. On the other hand I attended a high school which was 50% Mormon, and by senior year almost all of my close friends were devout Mormons (I was somewhat straight edge back then, which meant that I wasn’t comfortable hanging around my non-Mormon friends as they generally liked to get baked all the time). At one point I developed such an interest in Mormonism that I was reprimanded by the Vice Principal (who was a Mormon) for passing out copies of the Book of Mormon on campus (I ended up converting one girl! My Mormon friends were not pleased since they knew I was doing this more in mockery than sincerity). I saw the tension between non-Mormons and Mormons first hand throughout high school (the Mormons were termed the “Mormonites”). One particular example illustrates the tension that seethed under the surface. In my AP English class there were three popular girls who sat I next to. One day I noticed that Andrea and Erika were gone, and I asked Jana, who was present, where they were (seemed strange that they got sick on the same day). Jana told me that the were off on a “Mormon related activity.” Without any further prodding Jana, who I knew was from a somewhat conservative Presbyterian background, started telling me that Mormonism was a “cult” and that they “really weren’t Christian” and that Joseph Smith (the founder of Mormonism) was a “crook and liar.” She was just repeating the talking points that were commonly presented and reinforced in most of the non-Mormon churches in the local area. Her outburst wasn’t atypical, and my Mormon friends would often talk about experiences when they were younger when people would disparage their religion when their acquaintances didn’t know that they were Mormon. The point is that in much of the country Mormonism isn’t a well understood religion, but in regions where Mormons and other Christian groups are well represented, other Christians, in particular evangelicals, are well aware of the differences between Mormonism and other forms of Christianity. Not only is Mitt Romney peaking early but Christian networks will start “spreading the word” about Mormonism if he becomes prominent on the national stage, and I wouldn’t be surprised if James Dobson interviewed an “expert” on the Mormon “cult” within the next year if Romney doesn’t fade. For secular people the differences between Mormonism and other forms of Christianity are not of great note. So I doubt that the media will really see the underground evangelical groundswell that will surge in response to any scenario where Romney is a front runner until the candidacy is already dead on arrival. The problem with Mormons is not that they aren’t “Christian,” it is that they try and assert that they are Christian, which enrages evangelicals.
But if Romney was the focus of my post I would be putting this on the politics blog. I’m not, and the reason is that Mormonism is a world religion which arose in the light of history (there are about 3 million Mormons in the United States, another 3 million abroad). While questions about the “historical Jesus” or “historical Muhammad” are filled with speculation, supposition and textual analysis, Joseph Smith is a historical personage, and the growth and elucidation of the Mormon religion has been copiously documented. Mormonism can give us insights into how religions crystallize into a “mature” form over time, and the influence that the whims and preferences of a founder might have as well as the buffering and canalizing power of a particular sociohistorical context. I have posted on Mormonism before, but this post will be far longer and cover more ground.
Update: You can find much more via google. To clear up a confusion for some people: I don’t think Romney’s religion problem is that great in a general sense. A 1999 poll noted that only 17% of the public rejected voting for a Mormon (vs. 3% for a Jew), but I suspect that a disproportionate number of that 17% are evangelical Christians who are the core of the Republican primary electorate. I don’t think Romney’s Mormonism is any more problematic for the the vast majority of Americans than George W. Bush’s Methodism, but the vast majority of American voters are not going to be voting in the Republican primary in South Carolina.
In preparation for this post I read One Nation Under Gods, by Richard Abanes, which is a history of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) skewed toward its 19th century roots. Abanes is an evangelical Christian who is moderately hostile to Mormonism. Nevertheless, Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic Magazine, gave the book a blurb so I assumed it was more than your typical polemic. The book has hundreds of endnotes, which you can use to check Abanes’ shading of his sources (a Mormon group has examined many of the endnotes). Since I am not totally ignorant of Mormonism I could judge to a moderate extent the accuracy of many of the points Abanes was making, and in general I think he presents a pretty accurate narrative, though sometimes his sampling and culling of the record can be irritating. Instead of forming my idea of what Mormonism is and how it came to be Abanes simply added more depth and detail to my conception.
There are two threads that Abanes weaves throughout the book:
1) Mormons put their Church ahead of the United States and there is reason to suspect that putting Mormons in positions of power is dangerous to the health of our republic.
2) Mormons are not Christian.
I actually reject contention #1 (ie; I don’t think a Romney presidency would be all that bad, assuming that he didn’t govern like a social conservative on the warpath against fetal stem cell research) and think that #2 is highly colored by Abanes’ own evangelical Christian background. There are a few areas where the author’s bias crops up in a problematic manner. I will offer two examples:
1) The author is an evangelical Christian and he assumes that most of the readers are Christian, so he appeals often to the Bible to refute Mormon claims. For example, he gives considerable space to debunking claims of Mormons that Joseph Smith and Mormonism are foreshadowed in the Bible via textual analysis. This can be taken to such lengths that I feel many non-Christians will find Abanes’ digression irrelevant to the main substance of the book as well as unpersuasive because of the vagueness of the passages being cited. For example, the author attempts to refute Mormon claims (often dating to the 19th century, but still brought up in contemporary Mormon apologetics for the practices of their forebears) that polygamy was sanctioned by the practice of the patriarchs (ie; Abraham and Jacob were polygynous). Abanes responds that almost all references to marriage in the Bible imply monogamy, so polygyny must be a pagan practice that the patriarchs had picked up from their neighbors. As someone who has read the Hebrew Bible multiple times, and Genesis dozens of times, I don’t find this persuasive at all. God makes quite clear what is verboten and what is not, and polygyny is not proscribed in the law.
2) Sloppy logic tends to creep in now and then when the author veers from an objective third person vantage point to a more personal first person Christian opinion. In the chapter which explores whether Mormons are Christian (the answer is a strong negative) Abanes asks the reader to consider if Christians can be considered Mormon. Since Christians can not be considered Mormon, according to Abanes it stands to reason that Mormons can not be considered Christian. I will not even deign to critique this sort of argument, but will just observe that this is not out of the range of the talking points some of my evangelical Christian friends have subjected me to. Clearly this sort of “logic” is meant for the choir, the syntactic style of logic is more important than the formal structure and clear inferences.
With those caveats in mind, I will move on to the substance of Abanes’ book.
Joseph Smith
Abanes spends a lot of time on the character of Joseph Smith. The short of it is that Joseph Smith was a narcissistic conman. For a more contemporary example of the con that Smith managed to pull off just consider L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. I know that Mormons will find this offensive, and there are Mormon apologetics which refute this contention (of course), but unlike Muhammad, the Buddha or Jesus Christ there are newspaper articles and studies by investigators that asked people who knew Smith and his family about his character and origins. Joseph Smith’s family were lower class New Englanders who had fallen in the world. They were part of a class of poor Americans who made their living by their wiles and their ability to exploit the “cracks” in civil society (they regularly did not pay back debts and moved on).
It is important to know that many of Smith’s formative years were spent in the Burned-Over District of upstate New York where there was an efflorescence of new religious movements due to the Second Great Awakening. Abanes does not cover this topic in great detail, perhaps because he wanted to emphasize the character of Joseph Smith as sui generis and particularly diabolical (if Abanes was being explicit I suspect he would have asserted that Smith was inspired by Satan). But I have read that the Mormon rejection of a conventional hell (there are multiple levels of heaven, and an “Outer Darkness” for Mormon apostates) and baptism after death derive from Smith’s affinity for the Universalist sect that was popular during this time throughout New England and upstate New York (the Universalists eventually folded into the Unitarian Church in 1960, ergo, Unitarian-Universalists). The Universalists themselves trace their intellectual lineage back to the 5th century theologian Pelagius who was rebuked by St. Augustine and declared a heretic. Abanes might have elided over this because acknowledging this would have emphasized that many of the ideas of Mormons can be found among early Christians, though those particular views were eventually rejected by the consensus of the Church.
But in any case, Abanes notes that Smith was an inspirational preacher, who hopped between various denominations and mastered the King James Bible (KJV) as well as choice phrases in Latin or Greek which would induce awe his audience at particularly pregnant moments. Joseph Smith was also a gifted storyteller, at least according to his mother, and spun tales about Native Americans out of the air. Finally, he was rather tall (over 6 feet) and judged to be handsome. His combination of imagination, verbal aptitude (at least orally) and handsome visual aspect seem to be reasons why Smith rose up and succeeded as a messianic prophet figure.
Abanes also notes other aspects of Smith’s personality. He was the type of person who thought very highly of himself and would state that he was extremely handsome, gifted or good to all who would listen. His physical size combined with his narcissism also meant that Joseph Smith enjoyed picking fights with others, and even when he was a prophet of great power he would enjoy wrestling and throwing down men who he thought needed to be brought down in the world. Smith’s sexual apetites were also extravagant, and it seems plausible that the Mormon practice of polygamy derived from the need for Smith to engage in sexual liasons with women (often young) he found attractive. Abanes also chronicles Smith’s stints as a small-time conman who tracked buried treasure using a “magic seerstone,” his founding of an unlicensed bank (or as he termed it, “anti-bank”) and his time as a criminal under indictments in Missouri.
And of course, there was also Smith’s period as a “lieutenant general” in Illinois who headed up a Mormon army of 4,000. This was the second largest armed force in the United States after the federal army, which had 8,000 active duty men under arms. Joseph Smith liked to parade in military uniform and march his troops through the Mormon dominated town of Nauvoo, Illinois. Smith even announced his candidacy for the presidency in 1844 (he also fancied that he would of course one day be king of the world after the impending Second Coming).
In sum, Smith was a megalomaniac according to Abanes. But this opinion is also held by most non-Mormon scholars from what I have seen, so though the details are likely disputable most non-Mormon scholars of note tend to agree on the general direction of the vector.
“Persecution” in the Midwest
The standard picture presented by Mormons (personal communication, their literature) is that they were driven out of the Midwest by those who attacked them because of their religion. The truth is more complicated, as is implied by the fact that Joseph Smith raised an army of 4,000 in the mid-1840s.
Like Smith most of the Mormons were Northeasterners. Their first major migration was to Ohio, where Smith had some supporters. But a revelation from God directed Smith to tell his Mormons that Zion, where Christ would return to earth, was in Jackson county Missouri, and so a massive migration of thousands of Latter Day Saints ensued. As I noted above most of the Mormons were by origin northerners so there was already a built up bias against them from the local residents who were pro-slavery southerners by identification. Additionally, Abanes asserts that most of the Mormons were lower to lower-middle-class converts who were immersed in the occult and magical fringes of the Second Great Awakening, so they often alienated the natives by claiming that they would be exalted when Christ returned and flaunted magical powers and occassionally even claimed to cast spells and hexes on those they disliked. On a social level there was a tendency for Mormons to stick together and discriminate against non-Mormon businesses. On an individual level they were generally not derived from the “respectable” segment of American society and so not particularly polished in their habits or comportment.
These factors led to the translocation of the Mormon community to another county in Missouri after the final precipitating event of perceived anti-slavery editorials by the Mormon newspapers (recall that the Mormons were Yankees). But soon enough the new non-Mormon neighbors complained about similar goings on as had previously occurred at the original Mormon settlement. Ingroup-outgroup dynamics simply alienated Mormons from the surrounding community. The resolution to this problem was to allocate to Mormons a particularly underpopulated county where they could live by themselves so as not to alienate non-Mormons.
But after Joseph Smith’s banking failure (he printed money without authorization) he had to leave Ohio and once he became the core of the Missouri settlement Mormons spread out and began infiltrate other counties in violation of the implicit agreemant made with the state legislature (which specifically alloted to Mormon settlers their particular county). So again, tensions flared. Eventually there were atrocities as armed Mormon fanatics clashed with local militias, and at one point there was the so called “Mormon War” where the state of Missouri came close to exterminating the group. Joseph Smith and his confederates were arrested after he had to sue for peace (the state of Missouri mobilized everyone against the Mormons), but eventually he managed to escape to Illinois. Once in Illinois the Mormons managed to turn the town of Nauvoo into their own state within a state. Attempts to extradite Joseph Smith to Missouri failed because he always had a bodyguard and he even had a local ordinance passed with forbid the entry of those whose intention was to take him back to Missouri for trial. Abanes documents instances of murders, beatings and extra-legal torture performed on non-Mormons and dissidents in Nauvoo by Mormon fanatics. Eventually the practice of polygamy and the fact that Joseph Smith had become a law unto himself prompted the state of Illinois to to intervene, and Smith was arrested and killed by a lynch mob. You can google to find those particular details.
After this the vast majority of the Mormons fled to Utah as the federal government was moved to act against their army and warrants were out for the arrest of Mormon leader Brigham Young….
Utah
Utah territory (which was a far greater expanse when Mormons originally settled it) was hardly populated by any other whites so the Mormons under the leadership of Brigham Young established their own theocratic state for nearly five decades. Abanes documents instances of violence against non-Mormon residents, and conflicts between Mormons and federal troops. It seems that the Civil War gave the Mormons a respite as the federal government neglected the Utah situation for several years. Abanes notes that the Mormons gleefully tracked the casualties back east as they assumed that the End was at hand and the United States would have to turn to the Mormon Church to save the Constitution and the republic. This period witnessed a great deal of hostility between Mormons and the rest of America, and it seems accurate to say that Mormons were in America, but not of America.
To illustrate the degree of hostility between Mormons and the rest of the population of the United States, consider the Mountain Meadows Massacre. This was an incident where it seems likely that the Mormon leadership colluded with Native American tribes to plunder an affluent wagon train. When the Natives couldn’t finish the job the Mormons appeared on the scene as rescurers but killed all individuals over the age of 6 after the settlers had agreed to a truce in return for safe passage (Mormons assume that those under 7 are innocent).
Abanes also suggests that the hallmarks of Mormonism and its relationship to the United States persisted after the 1890s when Utah became a state persisted. For example, Abanes asserts that until 1945 church presidents were polygamists. Abanes also notes that an oath that Mormon males took until 1924 when they entered the priesthood (all Mormon males are members of the priesthood) swore vengence upon the United States for the killing of their prophet and leaders. Abanes notes that all church presidents, including the present one, swore this oath!
Abanes’ narrative doesn’t extent much into the 20th century, the period during which Mormons “normalized” their relationship with the rest of America. Instead, he moves on to specific topics that are crucial to the perception of Mormons by non-Mormons.
Race
It is well known that the Aaronic priesthood was off limits until blacks until 1978. It is less well known that it is a common Mormon belief that the Native Americans are descendents of ancient Hebrews (by and large), so of course they were white, and their dark skin is a result of sin. The book of Mormon speaks glowingly of those who turned to virtue and Christ becoming “white and delightsome,” and until 1980 Mormons spoke of Native American converts “whitening.” I have queried this particular point with Mormons before and generally it elicits anger and outrage, but very little outright denial. And Native Americans are not the only “cursed” people, the standard idea is that dark skinned peoples were born into their bodies because they sinned in their preexistent lives in heaven by following Satan instead of Jesus. White people followed Jesus and so were born into white bodies. Another explanation is that non-white peoples are descended from Cain, who had a “mark” set upon him by God (ie; dark skin). The Mormon ideas about race aren’t too hard to google, or too original in light of 19th century America, so I’ll leave it at that.
Are Mormons Christian?
Abanes spends a lot of time on this topic. Are Mormons Christian? Abanes concludes that Mormons deviate from historic Christianity. I emphasize historic because the particular form that Christianity took by the 4th century compressed and obliterated a great deal of variance in theology and practice, and some Mormon beliefs and practices likely fall under the rubric of some ancient Christian sects. But, if “Christian” is conceived of as an expectation (assuming some variance) within a particular range, Mormons likely fall outside of any expected range. Why?
Here are some points.
1) Mormons reject the Trinity. They believe that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are separate individuals.
2) God has a physical body (ie; hands, head, body, etc.).
3) Jesus and Satan are brothers, one of God’s many children (one line of thought is that the Heavenly Father is the literal father of all human’s, at least their preexistent selves).
4) God was once a mortal being who was eventually exalted to Godhood.
5) This exaltation is the fate of Mormon males who follow proper rules, rituals and hold to true belief (women can attain some level of divinity only by marriage to an exalted male).
6) God is married to the Heavenly Mother. There is some talk that God might have other wives. There is also some talk that the conception of Jesus was a rather more physical process (since God is a physical being) than is normally conceived of in Christianity.
7) God lives on Kolob, a planet in this universe (I believe in the Pleiades cluster).
8) Mormons are henotheists, they worship one God, but accept a multiplicity of Gods. In other words, not only can Mormon males become God of their own universe, there are likely other Gods in the universe who created their own planets, and there were Gods in the past (one responsible for the Creation of the God of this planet).
9) Though polygyny is banned by mainstream Mormons, Mormon males may be “sealed” to more than one woman sequentially. That is, Mormons believe that the afterlife is characterized by normal familial relations, and a man may have more than one afterlife wife (imagine his first wife dies).
10) Jesus created the earth from matter, instead of out of nothing as in traditional Christianity.
11) Mormons have prophets (Joseph Smith) and post-Bible books (Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, etc. etc.).
12) Mormons believe Christ will return to Missouri to usher in his Earthly Kingdom and that Adam and Eve fled to Missouri after being expelled from the Garden of Eden.
13) As I have alluded to above, Mormons believe that our spirits are preformed and that we have had experiences/lives in heaven before our earthly one. One reason Mormons have so many children is that they are creating bodies for these spirits.
14) Mormons have a rich tale of a War in Heaven between Satan and Jesus. This is generally not emphasized or explicated in mainstream Christianity (it really isn’t fleshed out in the Bible, there is some material in the Apocrypha), but is a feature of Milton’s works of fictional interpretation.
I could go on and on. But it is important to note that very few Christian churches accept Mormon baptism as valid.
Mormons believe that Jesus Christ is their savior, and they follow Christ, so they are Christians. But look at some of the beliefs above. If you ignore that Mormons revere Christ more than Muslims do (though Jesus is highly thought of in the Koran) on a relative scale it seems that Islam or Judaism are more like mainstream Christianity than Mormonism. For example, Mormons are not really monotheists! Not only do they dispense with Trinitarian theology as philosophical gibberish and accept that the three aspects of the Godhead are actually separate beings, they accept that other gods may exist.
I don’t particularly care that Mormons aren’t Christians, but it engrages Abanes and many evangelicals because they assert that Mormons are confusing people as to their true nature. I went to the LDS website and found this page titled The Nature of God. There is no hint here that Mormons reject the Trinity or the peculiarities of their ideas of the nature of God in comparison to other Christians (or other monotheists). The language used in fact makes it very difficult to note any difference from mainstream Christianity. Here is the president of the church responding to the FAQ question as to whether Mormons are Christians. Again, there is no explicit falsity but a definite sidestepping of the differences between Mormonism and other Christianities. I spent about 30 minutes going through the links and I found nothing that hinted at most of the points above. I suspect there is information on the site that would yield the data above, but it seems to be relatively hidden.
Abanes and other evangelical Christians are concerned because they suspect that people are being seduced away from true Christianitity to a non-Christian religion posing as Christianity. To Abanes and his fellow believers people are being led away from salvation by the duplicity of Mormonism. Since I’m not Christian the Mormon soft-pedalling of their beliefs doesn’t strike me as despicable, they are simply using tactics common to missionary religions: preach to people in a gentle and accessible manner when possible, reinterpret the religion in terms that non-believers can relate to. Eventually converts do find out the details of the Mormon religion, but no doubt they are more emotionally prepared for the somewhat shocking details by that point. Muslims do the same thing when they talk about Jesus being a revered prophet, Hindus when they state that Jesus is an avatar of the Godhood and Christians often attempt to identify the Christian God with the God of a local people (ie; the Mizos or Karens of Southeast Asia had Gods which resembled the Christian God a great deal so missionaries simply implied that Christianity was their primal religion and the traditional religion was a garbling of their true faith). I do think that Abanes has a point though when he offers that Mormons believe that mainstream Christianity isn’t really true Christianity, that the Mormon Church is restored church of the days of yore. But ultimately this point is only relevant because evangelical Christians form at least half of the Republican primary electorate. In the long run Romney is toast. Either that, or political consultants are actually worth the millions they are paid (I’m skeptical, Romney should pray to Jesus if he is serious about running for president).
Religion is always true
One of the most amusing aspects of Abanes’ book was that he often wore the hat of the skeptic and true believer (in evangelical Christianity) in quick sequence. While Abanes was quick to contextualize Mormonism and show how Joseph Smith’s milieu and subsequent historical events affected the path of the development of the religion he obviously believes that evangelical Christianity is a good recapitualization of the primitive Christian church that needs no contextualization (see the beliefs of the author’s own church). In fact many Mormon beliefs can be thought of as state of the art popular culture science and scholarship, for the early 19th century!
Abanes shows how Smith seemed to be strongly influenced by the pop archeology of his day which posited that the Native Americans were descendents of Hebrews (the 10 tribes) and that the Mound Builders had once had a marvelous civilization which collapsed under the weight of their sin. Many of the rites and rituals performed in Mormon temples also seem to derive from Freemasonry, which was a vital and powerful movement during Joseph Smith’s day. In the pre-genetic era Smith’s idea that skin color was a reflection of ancestral iniquity were not entirely implausible, as was a Lamarckian concept that lightness was acquired through correct belief was heritable. Smith’s penchant for women and subsequent normalization of polygamy influenced Mormonism for decades, and today Fundamentalist Mormons who number in the tens of thousands (and least) continue to carry that particular torch. But plural marriage (as they like to call it) was practiced by some groups in upstate New York during that time period so it was not that revolutionary or unprecedented when the Mormons introduced it. The idea that Mormons espouse about the physical nature of God is grounded in “common sense” which rejected some of the more peculiar Greek philosophizing which entered into Christianity (Mormons mock the idea that God sits upon a “topless throne” as logically incoherent). The Mormon God is not outside logic so they avoid some of the more common conundrums posed by the definition of God within the monotheistic tradition (ie; omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient).
Many of the ideas from the early 19th century do not stand up to 5 minutes of reflection. The Mormon idea that Native Americans are descended from the 10 tribes of Israel is refuted by modern archeogenetics, linguistics and paleoanthropology (the historical events posited in the Book of Mormon are eminently testable). The Book of Mormon records an old world civilization with horses, cattle, wheat, wheels and advanced metallurgy which seems to have left no archeological or biogeographical record to speak of. We know how skin color emerges as a phenotype in its broad sketch, and though one can find ways of reconciling the Mormon idea that darkness is a curse from God upon sinning spirits with anthropology and genetics, the original Mormon prophets and presidents seemed totally unaware of the manner in which their model was expressed in this world (despite numerous revelations from God!).
The details of the history of the Mormon Church are on public record. Reports about Joseph Smith’s history as a conman can be found in public records (arrest warrants) and newspaper articles. The wars between Mormons and other Americans are also verifiable via newspaper reports. Though these reports are are likely skewed against the Mormons the obituaries of those killed by Mormon toughs can likely be tracked down. Newspapers and investigative journalists spawned a cottage industry documenting the peculiarities of polygamous 19th century Utah.
Abanes points out that the original copy of the Book of Mormon was filled with grammatical mistakes, double negatives and other syntactical errors common among lower class Americans of the early 19th century…like Joseph Smith. He notes that Joseph Smith translated the Golden Plates upon which the the Book of Mormon was written from “Reformed Egyptian,” a language no one had, or has since, discovered any other evidence of. Additionally, when a follower of Smith showed some transcriptions of Reformed Egyptian script to a classicist in New York the man simply responded that what he saw before him was a hodge-podge of chicken scratches and garbled Roman and Greek letters. There are also peculiar anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, the Jews who arrived in the New World in the 6th century before Christ set up synagogues…when synagogues were not a feature of Judaism during this period. Names like “Timothy” crop up in the text which aren’t appropriate for Hebrews of the 6th century. Abanes also points out that prior to French occupation in the 1860s the Comoros islands were spelled “Camora” in Arabic, and their capital was “Moroni.” The final battle between two Native American groups in the Book of Mormon happens on a hill called Cumorah, and the man who survives that battle and becomes an angel is “Moroni.” The 1830 Book of Mormon spells “Cumorah” “Camorah.”
The list goes on. Abanes is quite clearly enraged that anyone could even credit Mormonism since it has such a falsifiable paper trail. He notes that when confronted with basic facts that cast doubt on their religion Mormons often rely on a personal testimony of faith! Abanes notes multiple times that Mormons are subjective, that their religion is rooted in emotion, that they reject rationality when it comes to their spirituality. Personally, I find this rich. The modern Protestant tradition in large part rejects the cool rationality of Thomas Aquinas in favor of justification by faith alone. Protestant philosophers like Cornelius Van Tail forwarded the idea of Presuppositionalism, that the world is intelligible once you presuppose the truths of the Bible (ergo, Christianity).
I will grant that the claims of mainstream Christianity are not so nakedly falsifiable as the claims of the Mormon religion, but I suspect that the same cognitive processes are at work. The relative growth of Mormonism despite its patently false claims about the history of the New World is no surprise, people don’t (in my opinion) examine their own religion with the same degree of rigor as they do everything else in the world. I have been in the presence of evangelical Christians mocking the Hindu concept of the incarnation of gods in human beings. I remember reading Ibn Warraq’s experience of meeting a Muslim who proudly displayed a copy of Why I am not a Christian, Bertrand Russell’s refutation of Christianity, without any self-awareness that the arguments mapped almost perfectly onto Islam.
In Scott Atran’s In Gods We Trust there is the following contention:
…disconfirming evidence only seems to make believers try harder to understand the deeper truth and to strength religious beliefs. For exampe, after reading a bogus article on a new finding from the Dead Sea Scrolls that seemed to contradict Christian doctrine, religious believers who also believed the story reported their religious beliefs reinforced (Batson 1975)….
In other words, for the vast majority of Mormons, including Harvard educated believers like Mitt Romney, no falsifying information will shake their faith. The Domneh are extreme examples of the inability of believers to accept anything that contradicts their faith, in their case, their Jewish Messiah, Sabbatai Zvi, converted to Islam and died a Muslim in good standing. The Domneh outwardly converted to Islam along with their Messiah, but inwardly continued to practice a form of crypto-Judaism and developed a theology which explained away their Messiah’s conversion to Islam as another twist on his Messianic mission.
This does not mean that believers are always immune to falsifying evidence, I am making probabilistic, not deterministic, assertions. Abanes offers documentation that Mormons who sought out the truths of Mormonism via archeology eventually ceased to believe (though often outwardly maintaining fellowship). The same can be said about men who trained as geologists but were from Creationist backgrounds, Ronald L. Numbers in The Creationists assayed men in these positions and they universally rejected Creationism but were extremely troubled by this development in their lives and did not want to speak of it. A shaking of the faith is not just limited to religion, some of the same cognitive processes are at work among those who are politically active, as it is difficult to move beyond the axioms one has held without question for
so long. And many of the people who reject their beliefs based on data or logical inconsistency are cognitively atypical (most people do not become geologists for oil companies or devote their lives to archeology that supports their religious beliefs).
Possible Traitors?
Abanes begins his book by citing a speech where then presidential candidate Orrin Hatch acknowledged that Mormonism might be needed to step in and fill the breech as the United States collapses. He points out that George Romney (Mitt Romney’s father) also expressed this viewpoint. Abanes is clearly implying here that Mormons are a government within a government, that their first loyalty is to their church, and that push come to shove they put their faith above their patriotism. He notes that the Mormon church is an extremely wealthy entity which is notoriously secretive about its reach, though it is well known that it is one of the largest landowners in the western United States. It seems clear to me that the detailed documentation of Mormon opposition and conflict with the American republic in the 19th century was simply background to support Abanes’ contention that Mormons are a threat to the United States. Many people know that the Mormon church advises their members to stockpile supplies, and it seems clear that many within the church see themselves as a shadow government that might emerge in the case of a possible civilizational collapse. The Mormon church already runs its own welfare system in Utah, and it is excellent at placing church members in jobs. A high birthrate means that Mormonism is perceived as a fast growing church. Mormons like Brent Scowcroft are well placed in government, and their reputation for honesty and clean living means that they are often recruited to agencies that deal with national security like the CIA.
First, Mormons only grew by 10.7% between 1990-2001, a strong implication that they are hitting the inevitable “plateau.” Second, it seems as many Americans convert out as convert in to the Mormon faith. We don’t need to fear a “Mormon planet.” Most of the growth of the Mormon church is occurring overseas, not in the United States. And Mormons are not the only religion with a mixed (at best) relationship with governments. Roman Catholics were for most of the 19th and early 20th centuries perceived to be a fifth column more beholden to Rome than Washington D.C. Jews in many nations have been assumed to be Jews first and nationals second. Even evangelical Christians like Abanes no doubt express a patriotism contingent upon the character of the American republic, that is, if they perceived that the “Anti-Christ” was working through the American state then no doubt as Christians they would turn their backs on patriotism and work against the government. The reality is that all people have divided loyalties. For most of the population there is religious faith, along with national sentiment, ethnic affinity and familial ties. During the 19th century adherence to the Mormon religion dictated interests at variance with that of the American republic. For most of the 20th century Mormons were patriotic Americans because they had found their own place in the republic. It is true that in many ways Utah is run as a Mormon republic, but expressions of Protestant Christian piety are also common throughout much of the American South in a fashion that would seem insensitive in the West or Northeast. Balancing religious faith with national patriotic feeling only seems difficult when one pushes the question to a reductio ad absurdum, but it seems that the same process can smoke out lack of pure and unadulterated patriotism in almost any religious group. Abanes extracts out allusions that Mormon politicians make to some of the more apocolyptic elements of their religion, but no doubt he would object to the same questions being asked of evangelical Christian public figures who also espouse a theology of impending End Times.
Assimilation
In The Creationists Ronald L. Numbers reports that in 1935 only 36% of Brigham Young University students denied that humans evolved from lower life forms, by 1973 this number had increased to 81%! What you see here is a conformity of Mormons to broad trends in conservative Protestantism which are not necessary conditions of their religion, but serve to generate common points of affinity between the two traditions. As I note above the original Mormons were often lower class converts with a fixation on the occult and magical, modern Mormons tend be stereotyped as techies and accountants (though One Nation Under God found that Mormons tended to be less socioeconomically impressive than reports drawn up by the church). Though Joseph Smith’s background and personal life would not predict a church of social conservatives, Mormons have been instrumental in buttressing specific social conservative movements (anti-ERA, anti-gay marriage today). One branch of the Latter Day Saints movement, originally called the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints, but now termed the Community of Christ, consists of those followers of Joseph Smith who remained in Missouri. This offshoot of the original sect has slowly shifted toward a far more traditional form of Christianity, as can be seen in their relatively transparent statement of beliefs (note how they explicitly state their acceptance of the Trinity). In contrast the majority of Mormons who migrated to Utah developed their own peculiar theology isolated from the majority of Christian believers in this country and shaped by the opinions and biases of men who had a deep hostility to the American polity and felt persecuted by the mainstream culture.
As I have noted before the human mind is not a unitary and interally consistent whole. Mormons, and humans in general, may often hold logically contradictory beliefs or behave in ways that do not cohere as a whole when viewed from the outside. Unbelievers who view Mormonism as a social phenomena can easily point out 1) obvious fallacies in their beliefs 2) deviances from the implications of those beliefs in their everyday life. But this is easy to do with almost anyone. Mormons live their lives embedded in a social world. In the 19th century when they often lived in a purely Mormon milieu they viewed the world, and non-Mormons, differently than Mormons today do. Now, it is true that Mormons are quite often exclusive and barely conceal their contempt for mainstream “Christianity” (which they consider the Whore of Babylon), but this attitude is not limited to Mormons. Mormon historical peculiarities (polygamy) and the heterodoxy of their theology likely makes their conceit more odious in the eyes of evangelical Christians.
Today Mormons are still concentrated in the Great Basin region of the West. But as I note above, 16% of Mormons are converts while 16% defect. This “churn” results in an influx of new worldviews into the Mormon church. Because of the peculiar structure of the church hierarchy the current president, Gordon Hinckley, is 95 years old and a product of early 20th century Mormonism. His successor will also likely be extremely aged. The Mormonism of these men was a purely white religion that was only then moving past its polygamist and outcaste past. But the Mormonism of this age is at least half non-white (and foreign), and the geographic range is rapidly expanding. Salt Lake City is already a majority non-Mormon city, and their high birthrates notwithstanding it seems likely that the influence of the church in Utah is likely to only go down in magnitude as religious diversity slowly creeps into the Mormon heartland (and as white flight from California begins to target Utah as Colorado “fills up”).
We aren’t ready for a Mormon president yet…but give America and Mormons a generation or two.
Great post.
Very informative. I hadn’t fully grasped the scale of the… erm, nuttiness behind the Mormon thing. :)
wow, a big post. You really are intersted in mormons.
Religions are funny things. They are conservative social value systems. Like this piece shows, they DO adapt over time to their surroundings and reinterpret their ‘truths’. They just do it A) slowly and B) with relative disregard of facts.
So how do slowly evolving value systems fair against quickly evolving ones? The fundamentals of human life don’t actually change that fast: birth, marriage, death, and finding some food in the between. They might actually do quite well.
The best selling point of any religion is that they create socialisation. Jump in and you will have pals, things to do every week, traditions, identity, mission and yes, surprisingly often, mating opportunities.
Still anyone looking at the factual trends will be happy to notice that the megatrend really is secularisation. I would even generalise it to Islamic countries. For the case of UK, the rough facts according to ESRC study are these:
* two religious parents have roughly a 50-50 chance of passing on
their beliefs;
* one religious parent does only half as well as two together.
* two non-religious parents will successfully pass on their lack of
faith;
Economist: I think you are mostly correct. For the vast majority the attractiveness of a religion has to do with its attractiveness as a lifestyle. Intellectual aspects are important to only a small minority. To the vast majority the competitor to religion is mass media (I was going to write TV, but then I realized I was dating myself).
Fascinating post, but I’m still not clear on why this wasn’t in Political Gnxp .. :-)
Interesting stuff. I remember seeing a plaque at a highway rest stop on interstate 80 as I was passing through Utah; it described the conflict between Utah and the US government right after the civil war. The federal army had to be sent to Utah and there was I guess a tense standoff for a while before the Mormons acceded, but I don’t remember what the root of the conflict was.
There are also still Mormon archaeologists who try to find evidence for precolumbian settlement from the Old World; I remember seeing someone try to tie some petroglyphs they found in Utah to ancient arabic or semitic script. Actually this is one of the points of Mormon doctrine that lends itself to argument by ridicule, since most people find the idea that one of the ancient tribes of Israel traveled to the New World by submarine rather absurd.
[i]3) Jesus and Satan are brothers, one of God’s many children (one line of thought is that the Heavenly Father is the literal father of all human’s, at least their preexistent selves).[/i]
That is very interesting. It explains a curious incident of my childhood which has always mystified me
One day we got a new schoolteacher, a young woman, who tried to teach us exactly that in the one lesson she gave us
Of course, she was immediately fired when we began to question this strange piece of information after class
I had no idea she was Mormon until now
brock, did you make it to the end of the post?
bbart, there were issues with brigham young not leaving his post as governor and the way federally appointed governors and judges were being treated in utah territory….
also, to make it clear i don’t think mormons are weird or nutty on any absolute scale. it is their deviation from the norms of western christianity that make them seem weird, even to those who aren’t particularly religious, but live in a society where the athansaian trinitarian formula makes more “sense” than a straight out tritheism like the mormons advocate.
Funny, I saw a show the History Channel last month about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and one of the things I thought was, “Y’know, if Romney makes a serious run for the Presidency, this stuff is gonna be talked about, and it won’t be pretty.” (Which might be due to the fact that I live in Massachusetts, or just because I am a political nerd who has no life…)
First, Mormons only grew by 1.3% between 1990-2001 (vs. 24% for Catholics and 16% for Baptists)
I believe those percentages are for share in the population, not growth rate.
I’ve just read Stark’s “Rise of Christianity” where Stark makes an explicit comparison between the Mormonism and early Christianity (both were, sociologically speaking, cults). He says that Mormonism grew by 43% on average every decade in the 20th century, which is very remarkable if this is true (according to the table, the Mormons grew in the 90s by only 10%).
About their attitude to race: If one looks where in the world there are Mormons [1, 2], you can see they cover the Christian world, excluding Africa. Also, the Mormons are very big in the Pacific, but only among Polynesians, not among Melanesians, who are allegedly, like Africans, sons of Cain, and among whom they didn’t proselytize. On the other hand, Romney speaks some Swahili, so maybe they do have some sort of African operation nowadays.
There are a lot of kooky things about Roman Catholicism too, but familiarity breeds complacency. Back in JFK’s day, a lot of protestants were still worried about being oppressed by a resurgent Roman church. JFK was elected and nothing bad happened, except to JFK. That irrational fear’s faded, just as the likelihood that the mountain massacre will stir up widespread fear or anger is extremely remote. Mormons seem to be fairly successful people, good citizens, generally responsible. As far as the rest of the religion, few really care.
I believe those percentages are for share in the population, not growth rate.
you’re right! sorry about that fuck up.
as for stark, be careful about using him as a source…i’ve read most of his works, but sometimes he gets carried away with his thesis. i saw him giving enormous projections for mormonism for the year 2100 based on the decade-by-decade growth rates for mormonism in the 20th century.
you can see they cover the Christian world, excluding Africa. Also, the Mormons are very big in the Pacific, but only among Polynesians, not among Melanesians, who are allegedly, like Africans, sons of Cain, and among whom they didn’t proselytize. On the other hand, Romney speaks some Swahili, so maybe they do have some sort of African operation nowadays.
they have three temples in africa. they have been trying to convert blacks since 1978.
Funny, I saw a show the History Channel last month about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and one of the things I thought was, “Y’know, if Romney makes a serious run for the Presidency, this stuff is gonna be talked about, and it won’t be pretty.” (Which might be due to the fact that I live in Massachusetts, or just because I am a political nerd who has no life…)
actually, i don’t think that the mountain meadows massacre, or, for example, the relative anti-feminism and past history of racism of mormons really will be a deep issue. this is all well known. though i don’t believe people are very reflective about their own beliefs, i think many are quite critical and systematic about the beliefs of others. i suspect that mormon theological heterodoxy will be the real reason romney quickly loses steam, but i would not be surprised if evangelicals start pushing forward the talking points about racism as another issue to get media coverage. i know the civil rights/racism angle was highlighted by several of my evangelical friends who otherwise had little interest in racial issues.
Well, I’m not offended although, of course, I disagree on some things and would quibble on some others.
It’s easy to explain Joseph Smith as a sex-crazed, handsome gypsy, and I can understand that perspective. But I don’t think it does justice to him. Certainly Abanes has an axe to grind, and you rightly point out that some of his reasoning could easily be turned on him. It sounds like he continues some of the evangelical hysteria we’ve heard in the past. (eg. the claim that there is a replica of the oval office in the Washington D.C. temple from which the Church will run the nation when it takes over. Please.)
I hear that Richard Bushman’s forthcoming biography may be the definitive biography for some time to come. Bushman is a believing Mormon, but he is also an emeritus professor at Columbia University with expertise in early America, and his book is no apologetic whitewash (so I hear.)
As for Romney as president, I tend to agree that evangelicals will have none of it.
BTW, you didn’t mention that Harry Reid, Senate minority leader, is Mormon.
It’s sort of illegitimate for most evangelical Christians to criticize other religions for “putting their faith before their country.” From my experience, it has always been the case with practically every religion that they want to superimpose large portions of their faith on the nation’s population to make it more “godly” and whatnot. If some joker appeared who said that he was Jesus Christ and he proceeded to attack this country, how many Christians would line up to fight him?
Also, I read a book a few months back, whose title I can’t remember for the life of me, that said that Mormon’s consider the Constitution to be a sacred document which was written under the direction of God and specifically believe that the US is God’s preferred choice of earthly realms… I don’t know how much of this is true, but perhaps you can enlighten me some.
Awesome post, btw…
BTW, you didn’t mention that Harry Reid, Senate minority leader, is Mormon.
you want to give the paranoids more ammunition? :) anyway, i have a mormon senator, so it isn’t that big of a deal. there are plenty of catholic senators, and a bunch of jewish senators. americans seem to give more latitude to politicians if they legislate rather than execute.
that said that Mormon’s consider the Constitution to be a sacred document which was written under the direction of God and specifically believe that the US is God’s preferred choice of earthly realm
yeah, this is a big deal for this author. as i note, it is a big issue with him that mormons believe their church will save the constitution. my personal viewpoint is that some hypocrisy here…but ultimately i think it’s a moot point. there is a mormon conspiracy just like there is a jewish conspiracy. not much of one.
“They say the Mormons are liars. They say that Joseph
Smith did not receive from the hands of an angel the
written revelation that we obey. Let them prove it!”
Brigham Young, Prophet and Logician
Quoted here.
The Mormons actually seem like decent people, except for the occasional polygamists. Would I believe in Elmer Fudd living on the moon and being blood kin to Jack Devil and his smokehouse menagerie, showering good tidings on the dancing invisible Unicorns below if I could live in a healthy community? Sure, but such mental derangement has got to lead to social derangement.
This is how they entice members:
Male – the idea of polygamy, or the history of.
Females – Have you ever seen those cute guys walking (always two) , in white shirt and black ties?
Western religions are always the same anyway, they all want your money.
:)
Liv, that’s like saying a car wash and burger stand are always the same simply because they want your money. Similarity in one respect those not mean similarity in all respects.
Have you seen the episode of South Park which recounts the life of Joseph Smith? The basic gist of it was that in spite of the outlandish nature of some of their beliefs, at the end of the day, Mormons are some of the most pleasant religious adherants in modern U.S. society. A friend of mine from Arizona mentioned this episode of South Park in particular. He is generally quite hostile to organized religion, but made the point that the Mormon’s he’d encountered were some of the most genuine and decent people he knew.
I’d be curious to know how you found them to be in high school Razib.
I’d be curious to know how you found them to be in high school Razib.
same. i often found them less tedious than evangelical christians because their religion has a “good works” aspect enforced by a strong communitarian structure which tends to dampen the tendencies toward extreme swings of sin and redemption that my conservative protestant friends were sometimes characterized by (ie; porn addictions interspersed with born again experiences). but religions that have an element of moral righteousness tend to be problematic because they often attract “free riders” who are in it just so they can feel better than other people…and they give everyone else a bad name.
“porn addictions interspersed with born again experiences”
Shit that’s quite funny.
I grew up in Concord, California, which has a significnat Mormon presence, but not close to 50%. The Mormons control the PTAs at the public schools, and most of the kids in the Police Explorers are Mormon.
In general, the kids were “good kids” – some of them chafed at some of the restrictions, especially on caffeine, but in general, Mormon kids were polite, and not troublemakers. I went to a Catholic high school, so I have no data on the teen sex lives of Mormon kids, but I have seen that many marry younger than their Catholic and secular counterparts.
There was an interesting post by Steven den Beste about the role of the missionary effort in creating a community of committed believers – people either wash out or are reinforced in their faith and attachment to the Mormon church and community by the experience. There are very, very few Christmas and Easter Mormons. (The post veers off into an explanation of why leftist protesters do such stupid things.) That level of committment is envied by pretty much any large established church in the US, even most evangelical ones.
people either wash out or are reinforced in their faith and attachment to the Mormon church and community by the experience.
this is correct. but in my town there were lots of people who were descendents of “jack mormons” who had left the church. the communitarian aspect of the mormon religion is very hard to get around. sometimes it can get quite creepy (a friend of mine had a father who was raised mormon, and when his parents first started dating at the hospital where both worked mormon employees were quite clearly spying on them and reporting back to the local notables).
maybe I am just dense, but i fail to grasp what all the fuss is about HERE wrt mormons and evangelical christianity…one set of illogical ideas versus another set of illogical ideas and we want to decide which is LESS illogical.
As far as Romney, i think razib’s point is well taken.
frankly, i’m hoping for a high pagerank for this post so some journalists will see it and stop writing glowing pieces about romney’s prospects. either they are not doing their homework, or they just want an excuse to write a piece on the guy.
This seems like as good a time as any to bring up a little homophone factoid that is relevant to this post and to this blog in general:
In case anyone here doesn’t know, there is a religious term, Arian, which has nothing to do with the term Aryan. While the latter is a racial/ethnic term, the former refers to Christian-derived belief systems that deny that God the Son is equal to God the Father, or who deny Godhood to Jesus altogether. (The “Arian heresy” was named for one of its popularizers, Arius). Mormons are Arians, as are Jehovah’s witnesses and Unitarians (although the term Unitarian has expanded to mean a lot of other things as well).
Thought it was an interesting piece of trivia.
gla, i’m well aware of that fact, a few years back jason malloy corrected a few typos (at my request) in a post of mine where i mentioned “arian germans,” and he “fixed” it as “aryan germans,” when i actually did mean arian germans.
and btw, jehovah’s witnesses and unitarian christians do affirm an affinity with the arian theology, but mormons do not from what i can gather. the mormon jesus is most certainly “divine,” and their theology is probably heterodox enough that it doesn’t fit into the old 4-5th century christological boxes.
You’ll never let me live that one down will you? :)
frankly, i’m hoping for a high pagerank for this post so some journalists will see it and stop writing glowing pieces about romney’s prospects
I dunno. Are American Christians today less likely to vote for a Mormon than they were a Catholic in the 60s? I’ve met lots o’ Protestants who still consider the RC church “not Christian”. But a recent poll in Newsweek showed the vast majority of Americans believe “good” people from other religions can “get to heaven”, a number which I imagine only increases the closer the other religion is in superficial form to their idea of Christianity (and as you point out Mormons have successfully mimicked vanilla Christianity).
I just don’t think there are enough examples or reliable ways of knowing if Americans would elect e.g. a black candidate, a Jewish candidate, a female candidate, etc., but my gut-feeling is that these attributes are less of a handicap than popularly imagined.
jason,
re: catholics, there were many catholics in the democratic primary in the 1960s. the handicap is bigger for romney since there are proportionally far fewer mormons in the republican primary (where the most anti-mormon voters concentrate).
also, note that an anti-gay measure in idaho failed in the early 1990s because of mormon-evangelical conflicts. mormons also tend to oppose school prayer, don’t know where romney stands on this, but orrin hatch opposes it.
oh, and of course the democrats had nominated catholics for president decades before JFK (al smith).
mormons also tend to oppose school prayer
What’s that about?
Was there much mention during the last election of the fact that John Kerry has Jewish ancestry (his grandfather was Czech Jew I believe, whose pre-Anglicised surname was “Kohn”)?
mormons also tend to oppose school prayer
What’s that about?
Speaking only for myself, I’m not against school prayer per se, but since it has become such a controversial issue I’m not comfortable using prayer to make a political statement. There is also the issue of being sensitive to religious minorities, esp in the Bible belt.
Back in high school an evangelical group would gather to pray in the courtyard. I was never inclined to join them because I felt it had little to do with communicating with God and more to do with showing off.
This is a little off-topic, but here’s something that I don’t has come up on GNXP before: the Pagan Origins of Christianity. Here’s something from a website called The Rejection of Pascal’s Wager.
The new cult of the dead and risen messiah originally had a purely Jewish following. It was when the apostle Paul (not one of the original disciples of Jesus) started preaching around AD40 that the number of Gentile convert starts to swell. We have seen that in the letters of Paul the belief about Jesus’ death and resurrection was very basic and undeveloped. In his first epistle to the Corinthians (15:3-8), all he said was that Jesus died, buried and rose again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. Paul further added that Jesus was seen by Peter, the apostles, James and finally by himself. Nothing was mentioned as to the day of the week that Jesus rose. Nothing was mentioned of the discovery of an empty tomb by the woman. Where did all these ideas come from if they were not historical?
As with the case of the nativity, these ideas came from pagan beliefs that were permeating the world of the early Gentile Christians. The new religion preached by Paul had to compete with the class of mystery religions that were popular among the Gentiles during that period. [1]
Christianity’s biggest rival during the first few centuries of its existence was Mithraism. Mithraism, the most popular of the mystery religions, had Persian roots and involves the worship of the Sun God, Mithra. [2] During this time, Mithraism was virtually the official religion of the Roman Empire, being very popular especially with the military. [3]
Many rituals and beliefs of Mithraism seemed so closely related to the Christian one that it becomes impossible to deny its influence on nascent Christianity. The Mithraists had a special day dedicated to their god. It was the first day of the week, which they appropriately called Sun-day, the “day of our Lord”. [4] Mithra was the God of the upper and nether world and it is he who will judge men’s deeds. [5] The Jewish thinker, Philo had already identified the Logos with the Sun, it was therefore natural and inevitable that the early Christians should identify Jesus with such a symbol. Sunday became established as the Lord’s Day for the Christians as well. [6] From this observance of Sunday, the myth eventually evolved to connect the rising of Jesus with that day. It is worth noting that the Mithraist ritual involve the liturgical representation of the death, burial (also in a rock tomb!) and resurrection of the god Mithra. [7]
Other contemporary mystery religions no doubt contributed to the evolution of Christian mythology. The Syrian cult of Adonis also had a large following during the time of early Christianity. Adonis, which means The Lord (Hebrew: Adonai), was represented in the liturgy as dying and then rising again on the third day. And in this liturgy it was the women who mourned his death and who found him risen on the third day. [8]
The Egyptian cult of Osiris had a similar belief; for it was Osiris who was dead and rose again on the third day. [9]
Early Christian liturgy was also clearly absorbed and imported from the mystery religions. The Greco-Roman cult of Dionysius had their God, born of the virgin, Semele, being torn to pieces by the Titans. He was then resurrected by his mother. In commemorating his sacrificial death, the devotees ate bread and wine to represent his body and blood. The Mithraist too had a eucharistic celebration very similar to the Christian one. And it was also Mithraism who first came up with the sign of the cross, made on the forehead. It was the supreme symbol of their belief. The worship of Osiris too involve veneration of the Osirian cross, the emblem of their god. [10]
In fact the beliefs, rituals and liturgy of the mystery cults, which antedated Christianity [a], so closely paralleled the Christian ones that the early Church Fathers insisted that the devil must have had a hand in these cults! [11]
The historical origin of the central events of Christianity did not begin with the actual resurrection of a Galilean Jew. It began when Jewish religious philosophy was grafted onto Greco-Roman paganism.
If Christianity derived from Mithraism why wouldn’t the early Christians admit it – they clearly admit that they derived from Judaism which was certainly more despised in that day? What was the advantage in hiding the actual origins? Why not an old testament which included Mithraistic beliefs, instead of the Jewish writings?
Ugh, Mort, you damn near hijacked the thread!
A few things… first of all, the idea of many that Mithraism “had Persian roots” is speculative, at best. There is no evidence to indicate that this is true, from what I’ve read (just do a Google search… the “Persian roots” idea was first developed by a New Age author). The fact that there are few documents that mention it and very few areas identified to be dedicated to Mithraic worship is evidence to this fact. (For some bizarre reason, the new HBO series, Rome, seems to be obsessed with Mithraic imagery) Secondly, there is no evidence that Mithraism was ever WIDELY practiced throughout the Roman Empire, except among some of the legionary officer ranks. There is some speculation that it was a sort of ancient military officer’s association.
I want to emphasize that practically everything that is “known” about Mithraism is speculation. I doubt much of anything of certainty will ever be known of it. Just go and read all the crap there is on the internet about it… it’s all contradictory.
As for the pagan roots of European Christianity, I think there is much more evidence to support that much of it was derived from Greco-Roman and northern European paganism. But this Mithraism reference is pretty far out.
Indeed, I would go so far to say that ancient European Christianity would better be described as “Judeo-Pagan-Christianity.”
This analysis is dead-on with respect to Romney. The hostility towards Mormons that I hear from evangelicals shocks me, especially since they are so similar culturally and politically. Romney has also run for office in the past on the pledge to keep abortion safe and legal, another reason it is unlikely that he would get past the primaries. It is amusing to me that Mormon Romney is a much more acceptable to the liberal residents of Massachusetts than to conservative Christians.
It is interesting that this level of hostility is not mutual: from my experience with Mormons (which is substantial since I was a devout Mormon until age 25 and all my relatives are active) they wouldn’t even consider not voting for someone for President because he/she were an evangelical Christian. My entire family voted for Bush in both elections, and his religiosity was considered a plus.
What’s that about?
as noted above, fear of religious persecution, which for mormons is something they have historical memory of. orrin hatch also grew up mormon in pennsylvania, so he had personal experiences which shaped his distrust of religious majorities when it came to a “nondenominational civil religoin.” my friends in high school who were mormon tended to express concern about agreeing upon prayer….
Was there much mention during the last election of the fact that John Kerry has Jewish ancestry (his grandfather was Czech Jew I believe, whose pre-Anglicised surname was “Kohn”)?
yes.
both his paternal grandparents were jewish by birth.
It is amusing to me that Mormon Romney is a much more acceptable to the liberal residents of Massachusetts than to conservative Christians.
if romney made it past the primaries i would not bet against him as winning a presidential campaign because of his proven appeal to the middle. but, as i am suggesting, his problem is not that the general public considers mormons weird, but that the evangelical core of the republican electorate often considers them a cult.
Mithraism “had Persian roots” is speculative, at best. There is no evidence to indicate that this is true, from what I’ve read
mitra/mithra is an indo-iranian god. whatever was grafted onto the religion as it was practiced it is almost certainly derived originally from the pre-zoroastrian religious milieu of persia (which went through various transmutations).
As for the pagan roots of European Christianity, I think there is much more evidence to support that much of it was derived from Greco-Roman and northern European paganism.
the philosophy of the christian religion tends to be greek. the ecclesiastical structure is partly modeled on roman antecedants. i don’t think northern european paganism has had any influence on the commanding heights of the religion in an intellectual sense (i say intellectually because some have argued that the de facto paganism of much of the northern european peasantry allowed for the reformation to succeed in overthrowing the roman catholic church).
If Christianity derived from Mithraism why wouldn’t the early Christians admit it – they clearly admit that they derived from Judaism which was certainly more despised in that day? What was the advantage in hiding the actual origins? Why not an old testament which included Mithraistic beliefs, instead of the Jewish writings?
the early christians were disproportionately jewish. their messiah was jewish. the straight line descent from judaism is clear.
on the other hand, greek philosophy or solar religious ritual that was imported was likely internalized without explicit self-knowledge. that is, after a few generations the origin of innovations or accommodations are often quickly forgotten. to use a non-christian example the manchu queue was imposed on the chinese after 1650, but when there were campaigns against the queue around 1910 it was considered chinese and there was violent opposition to its cutting (even though the republican authorities pointed out its foreign origin). the fez which ataturk banned as backward and associated with ottoman muslim identity rather than turkish nationalism was originally associated with balkan christians. and so on.
i don’t think borrowings from mithraism were necessarly explicit, and were likely stepwise. i think it is more precise to suggest that christianity was influenced by the milieu in which it expressed itself and imbibed sensibilities from its original greco-roman zeitgeist. nothing surprising about that.
semantic disputes about whether christianity is pagan or not is really only relevant if you are christian (or jewish, or muslim). for unbelievers they are just word-games because culture often does not have clear boundaries. remember, even talmudic judaism has many innovations in comparison to sadducee-temple judaism which can be traced to zoroastrian influence (and can i say it, hellenic?).
Mormon Romney is a much more acceptable to the liberal residents of Massachusetts than to conservative Christians.
Well, of course – this place is basically pagan, and so just sees Mormonism a another denomination of those Christian weirdos. Since Romney doesn’t wear his faith on his sleeve, is a good adminstrator, and is for low taxes, they (grudgingly) vote for him (they’d much rather have a democrat for idealogical reasons, but the democratic party is so corrupt here that they can’t find one who can stay out of jail long enough to win…) Someone who actually beleives in Christianity and is moderately knowledgeable about both faiths, on the other hand, knows how different Mormonism from orthodox Christianity.
Oddly, I think Joe Leiberman, an orthodox Jew, would gain more traction among evangelicals than Romney. But of course, Leiberman would never be nominated by the Democrats, so the point is moot…
Also, Razib, I don’t think things like the Mountain Meadow Massacre are that well known – I certainly didn’t know about it, and I flatter myself that I know a lot more American history than the average Joe. I think most people have a generally positive if leery view of Mormons, but don’t know much about them. Presidential campaigns have a way of bringing anything that can possible be used against someone to the surface. A Romney candiacy would bring a whole lot of scrutiny to Mormon beleifs that they’ve never had before…
Oddly, I think Joe Leiberman, an orthodox Jew, would gain more traction among evangelicals than Romney.
i don’t think it is odd because leiberman is perceived as being straight up, and mormons are not (by evangelicals). to stretch an analogy, leiberman is orthogonal in his beliefs, mormonism is a vector where the sign is flipped (in that mormons convert evangelicals and vice versa, orthodox jews tend to be marginal to the whole conversion game).
and yes, it would bring a lot more scrutiny, but most people are stupid and have short attention spans. i think for laid back christians and seculars i doubt it would be a salient enough historical event (remember, it is was a “long, long time ago”) to really “stick.” on the other hand, evangelical christians will start to be primed to fix on anything negative if romney keeps hanging around.
“you damn near hijacked the thread!”
I was going to put it on the open thread, but I can’t seem to register as “Mortimer” for the Yahoo page. It says that name is already taken, which seems strange because I think the names are specific to GNXP and are not shared with the other Yahoo pages.
“If Christianity derived from Mithraism why wouldn’t the early Christians admit it”
Apparently there were many different mystery cults of generally Greek and Roman and perhaps Egyptian origin that were followed throughout the Roman Empire. Many of them were supposedly very similiar in that they involved gods that died and then rose from the dead, used baptism, and had a eucharist involving a sacred meal of bread and wine. It may have been the case that had Christians admitted that their new religion derived from these cults, such as the one associated with Mithras, they would be at a loss to explain why it was necessarily the correct religion and not just another cult. So it may have been better to associate Jesus with the Jewish messiah than with Mithras, Dionysis, Osiris, and Apollonius of Tyana. Now, it does not seem to be at all obvious what grafted the Pagan stuff onto the Jewish stuff. As far as I know, the notions of rising from the dead, an afterlife, a God having a God for a father and a human female for a mother, a virgin birth, and the eucharist never were parts of Orthodox Jewish philosophy. So why Jews picked this up is not clear.
“leiberman (Joe) is perceived as being straight up”
Funny that he still has his media ‘halo’, despite the fact he was excommunicated during the 2000 campaign from Orthodox Judaism for lying about their rejection of abortion.
A Mormon friend once told me that they are required to wear, literally, ‘holy underwear’, 365 days a year. These undergarments are of a specific, set style, and actually blessed in a temple. Some other rumored details about wearing them even under a bath towel or robe escape me, but apparently this is taken quite seriously.
Exceptions are made for some sports, like swimming.
I was wondering how long it would be before the holy underware was brought up!
Pardner, that’s damn near as kooky as handling snakes :)
Nice folks and all, just touched in the head a bit.
“I was wondering how long it would be before the holy underware was brought up!
Pardner, that’s damn near as kooky as handling snakes :)
Nice folks and all, just touched in the head a bit.”
Yeah, wearing special clothing is NEVER seen in normal religions.
I’m afraid that several posters missed Razib’s excellent point that Mormons are not uniquely kooky among religions because ALL religions are kooky if you bother to take a look.
mitra/mithra is an indo-iranian god. whatever was grafted onto the religion as it was practiced it is almost certainly derived originally from the pre-zoroastrian religious milieu of persia (which went through various transmutations).
This little document is a pretty good summary of some of the problems surrounding the idea that it is a Persian religion. Practically everything that has been written on the subject cites Cumont and little or no research independent of him seems to have occurred.
On another note, I’ve heard of Mithraism dating back to Alexander’s armies… the possibility exists that they simply found some of the rituals interesting and imported them back to Europe one person at a time until the Romans came across it in Greece.
I’m personally of the belief that this was a legionary religion that simply utilized some Persian imagery and symbolism.
Here’s an interesting page on mithraism discussing a novel theory about the nature of the mithraic “mysteries”, which basically postulates that the religion was heavily influenced by new astronomical discoveries made by Hipparchus (the theory is elaborated in The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries from Oxford University Press):
The Cosmic Mysteries of Mithras
The page also discusses the question of whether the religion was imported from Persia:
For most of the twentieth century it has been assumed that Mithraism was imported from Iran, and that Mithraic iconography must therefore represent ideas drawn from ancient Iranian mythology. The reason for this is that the name of the god worshipped in the cult, Mithras, is a Greek and Latin form of the name of an ancient Iranian god, Mithra; in addition, Roman authors themselves expressed a belief that the cult was Iranian in origin. At the end of the nineteenth century Franz Cumont, the great Belgian historian of ancient religion, published a magisterial two- volume work on the Mithraic mysteries based on the assumption of the Iranian origins of the cult. Cumont’s work immediately became accepted as the definitive study of the cult, and remained virtually unchallenged for over seventy years.
There were, however, a number of serious problems with Cumont’s assumption that the Mithraic mysteries derived from ancient Iranian religion. Most significant among these is that there is no parallel in ancient Iran to the iconography which is the primary fact of the Roman Mithraic cult. For example, as already mentioned, by far the most important icon in the Roman cult was the tauroctony. This scene shows Mithras in the act of killing a bull, accompanied by a dog, a snake, a raven, and a scorpion; the scene is depicted as taking place inside a cave like the mithraeum itself. This icon was located in the most important place in every mithraeum, and therefore must have been an expression of the central myth of the Roman cult. Thus, if the god Mithras of the Roman religion was actually the Iranian god Mithra, we should expect to find in Iranian mythology a story in which Mithra kills a bull. However, the fact is that no such Iranian myth exists: in no known Iranian text does Mithra have anything to do with killing a bull.
Franz Cumont had responded to this problem by focusing on an ancient Iranian text in which a bull is indeed killed, but in which the bull-slayer is not Mithra but rather Ahriman, the force of cosmic evil in Iranian religion. Cumont argued that there must have existed a variant of this myth– a variant for which there was, however, no actual evidence– in which the bull-slayer had been transformed from Ahriman to Mithra. It was this purely hypothetical variant on the myth of Ahriman’s killing of a bull that according to Cumont lay behind the tauroctony icon of the Roman cult of Mithras.
In the absence of any convincing alternative, Cumont’s explanation satisfied scholars for more than seventy years. However, in 1971 the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies was held in Manchester England, and in the course of this Congress Cumont’s theories came under concerted attack. Was it not possible, scholars at the Congress asked, that the Roman cult of Mithras was actually a new religion, and had simply borrowed the name of an Iranian god in order to give itself an exotic oriental flavor? If such a scenario seemed plausible, these scholars argued, one could no longer assume without question that the proper way to interpret Mithraism was to find parallels to its elements in ancient Iranian religion. In particular, Franz Cumont’s interpretation of the tauroctony as representing an Iranian myth was now no longer unquestionable. Thus from 1971 on, the meaning of the Mithraic tauroctony suddenly became a mystery: if this bull-slaying icon did not represent an ancient Iranian myth, what did it represent?
Within a few years after the 1971 Congress, a radically different approach to explaining the tauroctony began to be pursued by a number of scholars. It is not an exaggeration to say that this approach has in just the past few years succeeded in completely revolutionizing the study of the Mithraic mysteries. According to the proponents of this interpretation, the tauroctony is not, as Cumont and his followers claimed, a pictorial representation of an Iranian myth, but is rather something utterly different: namely, an astronomical star map!
(read the rest of the article to see the arguments for the view that the tauroctony is a representation of new astronomical discoveries that were the basis for the Mithraic religion)
Funny that he still has his media ‘halo’, despite the fact he was excommunicated during the 2000 campaign from Orthodox Judaism for lying about their rejection of abortion.
That’s a pretty weird statement.
1. There is no central body in Judaism that has the power of excommunication.
2. I don’t know what he said so I can’t specifically respond to it, but Judaism doesn’t have the same attitude toward abortion as Christianity: Its dislike of abortion is not based on the idea that a fetus is a human, and is therefore somewhat more flexible.
The only area that I am aware of where he got a serous negative response from the observant Jewish community is when he fudged about the intermarriage issue. In my humble opinion he played it wrong: He should have said something like: “I think that no religion wants to see its members marrying out, but personally I have no problem with it if two people love each other and it won’t be a problem for them when they have kids…”.
FYI, i just checked out a little of mormon america and it quotes rodney stark as saying there might be as many as “265 million mormons in the year 2080.” seeing as how there are only 10 million mormons (max) today, i think that’s a load of bullshit. yeah, if mormons grew at an x% per year for 80 years it is possible, but religions rarely keep on a growin’ at that pace. to give an example, christians went from less than 5% of south korea’s population to 25% in 40 years between 1950 and 1990. but in the mid-90s that stalled, and might have decreased. the conversions continued, but it seems that the explanation was that the pool of those who were amenable to the christian religion were converting to difference christian churches now instead of from non-christianity to christianity.
“There is no central body in Judaism that has the power of excommunication.”
rldreview.com/cols/hentoff110600.asp
.asp?Page=%5CPolitics%5C archive%5C200010%5CPOL20 001023i.html
True enough, as the below link asserts. The article also confirms Mr. Lieberman’s excommunication, or beth din, by the New York Torah Court. Apparently their decisions apply to about 150,000 of the faithful.
http://www.jewishwo
This link gives the details of the Court’s objections:
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics
“Lieberman has been misrepresenting and falsifying to the American people the teachings of the Torah against partial birth infanticide, against special privileges and preferential treatment for flaunting homosexuals, and against religious intermarriage of Jews.”
True enough, as the below link asserts. The article also confirms Mr. Lieberman’s excommunication, or beth din, by the New York Torah Court. Apparently their decisions apply to about 150,000 of the faithful.
the rub is that there are about 1 million orthodox in the USA. these rulings have as much validity for jews as fatwas do, that is, they have validity for those who choose to accept them as valid. there is no institution like roman catholicism which one implicitly cedes this authority to via membership.
Mortimer:
As arcane points out, not everything you read or the Internet is reliable. For example, my own Google search turns up numerous articles about Osiris – some by Christians, but some by impartial scholars and some by avowed anti-Christians seeing the same parallels you do, and none except the one you previously quoted refer to Osiris as having been resurrected “on the third day.” I suspect that someone made up this detail to try to make the parallels more exact. I also found only a few sources that make a similar claim for Adonis: most sources agree that vegetation gods like Adonis and Tammuz were thought of as dying when winter came and being reborn (very different from rising from the dead) with the advent of spring.
Similarly, Semele, the mother of Dionysius, is not said to be a virgin by any source I could find. The standard account of Dionysius’s birth is that Zeus, as he so often did, copulated (no virgin birth here) with the mortal woman Semele. After he aceded to her demand to show himself to her in all his glory, she died from the sight, and Zeus saved the baby by sewing him up in his thigh, from which he was later born. There is an alternate version in which Dionysius is ripped apart by Titans as you say, but even that seems to have no virgin birth elemet as your source asserts.
The article on Mithraism on Wikiepdia is itself, of course, a potentially unreliable Internet source, but Wikipedia articles, in my experience, rarely contain blatant errors of fact or absurd interpretations. The article is very skeptical of claims along the lines of “Mithraism was almost the official religion of the Roman Empire.” At the bottom, it links to scholarly articles that make the same assertions.
Obviously Starks numbers are way off. (If I remember right, he predicted a steady 40% growth per decade without end). Worldwide, membership did grow from 8 to 11.5 million in the 90s (if the number I’ve seen are accurate) but church leaders have intentionally slowed growth in recent years to avoid chaos. Indeed, the growth rate should diminish as the low hanging fruit are picked, but I will say that even in countries where Mormonism has had its greatest success, membership is no more than a tiny sliver of the total population so there may still be plenty of potential converts. If the ceiling were 1 percent of all people, that is more than 60 million members (and more as the world’s pop. continues to grow). It is a testament to the energy of these people that they have grown as much as they have since their religion is a hard sell.
tony,
sure. my point was
1) to throw a little skepticism onto some of starks’ assertions he makes which regularly circulate widely in the press pool (he is the #1 go to guy for reporters and popularizers on a lot of topics related to sociology of religion).
2) remind people that social groups don’t expand into a vacuum. sects and cults can grow rapidly when society doesn’t notice them, but once they hit critical mass some of their endogenous vitality and worth tends to diminish and the society around them reacts and constricts. this i learned in fact from rod starks’ theory of religion, which was a narrow focus theoretical work :)
The article also confirms Mr. Lieberman’s excommunication, or beth din, by the New York Torah Court. Apparently their decisions apply to about 150,000 of the faithful.
I doubt that the “New York Torah Court” represents much more than the 3 people on it. I googled it, and as you can see every entry refers to Lieberman! Usually a Beit Din (Jewish court) is set up by well-known organization, representing some stream of Judaism, such as OU or Chabad. I looked, but couldn’t find any affiliation whatsoever. I think it was just three guys that got together to create a media incident. (I guess I wasn’t up on the media, since I hadn’t heard about it. If anybody took it seriously, I think I would have.)
every entry refers to Lieberman
In other words, it has never done anything else, and has no institutional presence – usually Google is pretty good at finding a homepage, address, etc.
Ha! I googled for ‘“New York Torah Court” -Lieberman‘ and got zero hits.
“not everything you read or the Internet is reliable”
That’s why I like to qualify things with the word “apparently”. That big long thing was quoted from another website, but I can’t find the exact URL for that particular article.
Tony, are you sure you’re a *former* Mormon. Surely you know that this: “church leaders have intentionally slowed growth in recent years to avoid chaos” is pure bullshit, much like the leadership’s so-called “raise the bar” explanation as to why there are fewer missionaries.
The truth is, with the advent of the internet, the intellectual core of the church is eroding. No longer do members in Provo and Sandy, Utah have to check out anti-Mormon books from their Mormon librarian (likely a member of their ward), they can read it in the privacy of their own home. They can talk with other apostates online.
Having said that, it’s enormously difficult to extract oneself from the church. The social consequences are huge.
As far as ancient Christian heresies go, Mormons are closer to gnostics than Arians.
Thanks for a fab post. Its fasicanting how a group can go from being in American but not of America and even with such “Un-christian” beliefs be integrated into the mainstream. Its going take some time to digest it really stimulanted me.
just a question and a comparison:
1) Whiling skimming through your post you state that Mormons accept the existence of other gods. Does this translate into tolerance for other beliefs ?
2) Have you had a look at the 3 HO’s / otherwise known as the Sikh Dharma. Here’s a religious group that in similar way to the Mormons contradicty elements in the same package. They combine strict Khalsa orthodoxy (5 ks, teetotal, vegertianism and rituals etc) that exceeds mainstream Sikhism while effortless indulging in a personality cult and a yogic practices which freaks out orthodox sikhs. Very strange
“Tony, are you sure you’re a *former* Mormon.”
I’m a former Mormon, but I’m not suspicious so when my relatives tell me that local congregations were out of control so leaders decided to not push so hard for baptisms, I thought it sounded reasonable. Actually, I wasn’t aware of the declining number of missionaries until I reasd this thread. Last I heard there were 50,000, which is 15,000 more than when I served in the 80s. I know some ex-Mormons harbor hostilities toward the Church; I harbor apathy. But you are right that leaving Mormonism is a major psychological and social adjustment.
“Whiling skimming through your post you state that Mormons accept the existence of other gods. Does this translate into tolerance for other beliefs?”
Mormons believe that humans can become gods, like Jesus and His Father–in fact, God was once a man– but all people who will ever become gods must be Mormon. There is only one way to Heaven; that is through God’s only true church, the Mormon church. They believe that people who do not accept these ideas in this lifetime will have the opportunity to join the faith in the next (where they exist as disembodied spirits) so it is believed that all people who have good hearts will eventually find their way to the truth.
Now that I am thinking about this, I think it is inadequate to sum up Smith as a conman; he was a charismatic and a mad genius.
My ex-wife had a Masters in music and an uncle who was a Monsignor in the Catholic Church. Those were the vital qualifications for being recruited to be the head judge for the Road Show competition a few years back.
One of the least known attributes of the Mormon Church is its promotion of Broadway/Vegas style musical productions. Every church parish(?) seems to have a group of teens organized into performing groups who compete in what are called Road Shows. They evidently work hard at it because the quality is uniformly high and the competition fierce. They needed my ex-wife – an impartial outsider – to pass judgement. There were a couple thousand Mormons in attendance, yet the public as a whole seemed unaware.
What to the acts look like? Think Donnie and Marie, or the Osmond Brothers. The girls wear long skirts and the lyrics are clean.
We think of secret rites as dark and vaguely evil but the semi-secret Mormon musical performances are light, brite, and wholesome. Odd.
How is Mormon interest in road shows like a secret rite? The cat is out of the bag: kids into music and drama is a great front for people plotting to take over the world.
Great post.
Mormons tend to be a nice bunch of folks IMO – with, as noted above, wacky beliefs like all religions. During my years in the Belt Buckle of the Bible Belt, the few folks that refrained from making disparaging comments about me being a Jew were the Mormons. It might have been because they weren’t much liked by the community in general and saw someone in the same position but I think it was because they didn’t care what I believed and didn’t make a judgment based on those beliefs.
Romney would fare better in the Democratic primaries than he would standing in for the GOP – If a war hero such as McCain can be shot off his pedestal by propaganda in the 00 SC primary, imagine what would happen to a “non-Christian” that claims he is Christian. Better yet, let the Catholic Guiliani and Romney debate in the South and see how the population reacts to TWO “non-Christians” as the potential leaders of the GOP. In my experience, which is relatively recent, Catholics are still not much liked in many places down South – Saint Christopher and the driving “g-d” comments were new to me.
Again – great info. Thanks
The Salt Lake Tribune has done some extensive reporting on Utah/Mormon demographic trends.
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_2886596
Mormon portion of Utah population steadily shrinking
This one’s more relevant to the Stark references:
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_2890645
Keeping members a challenge for LDS church
“The claim that Mormonism is the fastest-growing faith in the world has been repeated so routinely by sociologists, anthropologists, journalists and proud Latter-day Saints as to be perceived as unassailable fact. The trouble is, it isn’t true.
“Today, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has more than 12 million members on its rolls, more than doubling its numbers in the past quarter-century. But since 1990, other faiths – Seventh-day Adventists, Assemblies of God and Pentecostal groups – have grown much faster and in more places around the globe . . . .
“According to LDS-published statistics, the annual number of LDS converts declined from a high of 321,385 in 1996 to 241,239 in 2004. In the 1990s, the church’s growth rate went from 5 percent a year to 3 percent.
“By comparison, the Seventh-day Adventist Church reports it has added more than 900,000 adult converts each year since 2000 (an average growth of about 5 percent), bringing the total membership to 14.3 million. The Assemblies of God now claims more than 50 million members worldwide, adding 10,000 new members every day . . . .
“Take Brazil. In its 2000 Census, 199,645 residents identified themselves as LDS, while the church listed 743,182 on its rolls.”
“Take Brazil. In its 2000 Census, 199,645 residents identified themselves as LDS, while the church listed 743,182 on its rolls.”
I’m not surprised. Brazil went from few members prior to the 1978 doctrinal change concerning race to these kinds of numbers now, and when you’re baptizing that many people each year, most will slip away and forgot about that “Mormon stage” they went through. Plus, there are people like me: people born into the church whose names are still on the rolls but who are non-believers and would not call themseves Mormon on a census form. These are two ways in which Mormon leaders are not lying about numbers.
OK, secret rite may be too strong. But the movies, records and TV have long shown us black evangelicals performing gospel music. Consider the role of gospel singing in the recent movie ‘Ray’.
Similarly we associate most Prostestant congregations with hymn singing. For example recall the hymn singing scene in the recent movie ‘Cold Moutain’.
As long as there have been talkies we have seen Jewish Cantors on the screen.
Maybe I’ve led a sheltered life but Mormon music to me only meant the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. To my great surprise Mormons have an elaborate musicical performance tradition. Where have been the movies, the Discovery Channel documentaries, the PBS tributes? Morman practices, even these entirely innocent muscical practices, seem to be maintained in a privacy unusual in Christianity.
Secrecy in mystery cults and/or societies like the Masons are contrary to mainstream Christianity. At or about the time of Constantine Christianity triumpted over Mithratism in large part because Mithratism was a mystery cult whereas Christianity was open and public. Mormonism is Christian-like but well outside the Catholic-Protestant nexus.
Mormons are much more private than mainstream Christains. That I believe is on-topic for this thread. That I believe is illustrated by the Road Show phenomenon.
Secrecy in mystery cults and/or societies like the Masons are contrary to mainstream Christianity.
contingent on how said christians are perceived by society. mormons have a recent history of persecution (110 years ago) so they could argue that their secrecy is justified because of that. house churches in places like china are also secret, and they general derive from (though do not duplicate) protestant traditions.
Can anyone summarize prominent differences between the early lives and careers of Joseph Smith and David Koresh?
Can anyone summarize prominent differences between the early lives and careers of Joseph Smith and David Koresh?
didn’t koresh look like weird al yankovich?
Mormons have no desire to keep things like road shows from others. It’s just that Mormons divide the world into themselves and potential converts so the involvement of non-Mormons in Mormon activities becomes a “situation” for both groups. These activities are almost always designed to instill belief in the audience so a situation is created where members hesitate to invite a non-Mormons because the latter are going to feel like they are being proselytized. If a person who knows anything about Mormons were invited to an event, they would not want to go because they know that Mormons use every occasion to coax. The problem with things like roadshows is not that Mormons want secrecy; the problem is that they are unable to chill. For example, two of the most lavish roadshow-like productions put on by members are the Hill Cumorah Pageant held annually near Rochester, NY and another similar to done each year in Manti, UT. The productions retell stories from the Book of Mormon and about Joseph Smith starting the Church. The intent of these shows is first and foremost to get out the religious message to non-members and secondly to provide yet another opportunity for members to have a spritual, faith-reinforcing experience.
If one wants to speak of secrecy, you’re on more solid ground when you speak of religious ceremonies held in Mormon temples. Only devout Mormons are allowed to enter and folks are sworn to not tell others about the ceremonies performed. The practice once again raises the dark specter of conspiracy–”the Mormons are plotting to take over America”–but the truth is that Mormons have to earn their way in, and they believe they learn sacred things that help them get to Heaven. One has to earn the privilege, and it would offend God to “cast pearls before swine.” As Durkheim wrote, religion has always been about separating what is sacred from what is profane.
I wish to God that a desire for secrecy was something that drove Mormons because as someone surrounded by Mormons I get tired of constantly hearing EVERY detail of their religious lives. A fundamental desire of any devout Mormon is to get everyone to be as fascinated by the religion as they are. The only reason why you don’t see more of it is that they know others don’t want to hear it.
religious ceremonies held in Mormon temples
Do Mormans have regular public worship? What is it like?
“The truth is, with the advent of the internet, the intellectual core of the church is eroding. No longer do members in Provo and Sandy, Utah have to check out anti-Mormon books from their Mormon librarian (likely a member of their ward), they can read it in the privacy of their own home. They can talk with other apostates online.”
I am not a Mormon, nor have I ever been a Mormon, nor will I ever be a Mormon. However, I fail to see why anti-Mormon texts on the internet would necessarily erode their intellectual core. Maybe, maybe not. If a belief system cannot stand up to scrutiny, then, well, it will lose the brightest people. If it can stand up to scrutiny, it will gain the brightest. After all, the early adherents to religions like Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam included many of the best and brightest by the standards of their day. Different ages judge by different standards.
There are “anti” books and web sites written against every possible creed and scientific belief, and all these antis can’t be true (or false.) Perhaps the premier profession of the 21st century will be that of “researcher.” There will be degrees in Research. Research will no longer be that tedious necessary done in course of investigations. Research itself will be investigated.
“Do Mormans have regular public worship? What is it like?”
Yes, 3 one-hour meetings, back-to-back on Sundays. The plenary meeting is called Sacrament Meeting where members take bread and water (Mormons don’t drink wine) in rememberance of the Jesus’ sacrifice. One interesting item is that there is no professional clergy at the local level–all members have unpaid responsibilities. Often families are assigned to give talks, each member taking a few minutes. Unpaid church leaders occasionally speak, or maybe a missionary who has just returned from the field. This democratic approach to participation seems very effective since it makes everyone feel like the church is theirs.
On the first Sunday of the month, the meeting is devoted to people voluntarily getting up and expressing to them how much they know they are that the Mormon Church is the true church, that Christ has risen, that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. This practice is also very effective because there is social pressure to sooner or later stand up and speak, and even if your faith is wavering, the expected thing to do is to express your certainty concerning these things, and when a person does it, the act of saying you believe in public often has an emotional power which helps convince you that you are right. Saying it to others builds a commitment to it.
As it says on most church buildings “Visitors are welcome” but as I wrote above, the focus on all meetings is to affirm belief so outsiders at times will feel uncomfortable, unless they are interested in possibly joining. Men wear ties and white shirts and women wear dresses so if you are dressed much differently from this, you will look out of place. They pass the bread and water to people in their seats, and if you are not an eligible member, you don’t take eat the food but pass it along. No plate is ever passed.
In the second and third hours, members are broken into subgroups–men, women, age groups, male ranks–for specialized classes. All classes are run by unpaid members who are asked to teach.
Also, on the secrecy issue: Part of with why Mormons have meetings with almost no non-members attending is the same dynamic you get at a party. You usually don’t reach out much to invite people who aren’t your buddies because it will dampen the freedom to be yourself with people like you. We don’t see anything odd, secretive, or sinister about it when people act this way when organizing a party.
One interesting facet of Mormonism is how intent the organization is on using your time. In addition to a three hour meeting every Sunday, they have various meetings throughout the week.
The Sunday block is divided into three sections. For one, the entire congregation meets in what’s called sacrament meeting. The second section is Sunday School and for the final section, the women and men meet separately. The order is sometimes reversed to maximize building use efficiency.
You can go to any local Mormon chapel on Sunday morning about 10 a.m. and attend the meetings. Wear a suit and tie and when asked tell them you are a semi-active member from somewhere else otherwise, they will switch in the conversion mode. Worse, they may tell the missionaries about you.
Of course, the meetings are extremely boring and the theology preached ranges from amateurish to inane–in other words, it’s just like most religions.
As for the temple ceremonies; they were lifted lock, stock and barrel from mid-19th century masonic rituals. Mormons generally take it all rather seriously (the best way to piss of most Mormons is to mock the temple ceremonies.)
(Note: I was once a very active believer. I now look back and can’t quite figure out what the hell I was thinking, though it had a lot to do with being brought up with parents who are still devout.)
Note on secrecy;
Mormonism is highly structured organizationally and, like most religions, self-selecting. Yes, Mormons try to convert others, but if a visitor isn’t willing to go with the program, so to speak, they aren’t going to last.
The only real secrecy element are the Mormon temples and the rituals therein. It is a gnosis, but not a very deep one. Sociolgically, the temple is critical to Mormonism. My own long standing view, even when very active, was that it was largely kept secret to make it seem more profound than it really is. What’s quite amazing, and extremely bizarre, is that even among the very active, the rituals of most the temple ceremonies, and the symbolism of those rituals, are simply not discussed at all.
(By that, I really do mean at all. You simply do NOT discuss the temple ceremonies. Period. You are taught that is because they are so sacred. For something so critical to one’s salvation [and a Mormon cannot be saved without these ceremonies; if that isn't a gnosis, I don't know what is] this is quite surprising. On the other hand, the actual ceremonies are so anachronistic and shallow, it would be difficult to have an intelligent discussion on them.)
maybe more people should actually talk to someone who knows about the church. Maybe like an upstanding member. I have found that once people have gotten a taste of something they are unwilling to live, but is right, they tend to try to destroy it. Mormons don’t hurt you. Why do you try to hurt them? That is for you to think about. Not answer to me by any means. Think about why you are so interested, really, in the church. Everyone else, please look into it for yourself, don’t just believe what is spoon fed to you by an unbeliever. Have the sense to go, learn from the Church itself, not its members because people are not perfect and do not live the church’s teachings all of the time. Look deep into the gospel. Ask a member of the church if you have a question. By asking a person who is against the church, you will get an utterly biased response. I am not saying that you won’t get one the other way, but at least you can get both sides of the story. Use some time, your skills, weigh out the possibilities and make a decision for yourself. Don’t let anyone do that for you. Not even me.
you want to see a religion that truly adapts over time, not just this biased one? Research Catholicism in depth.
belinda wrote:
“Mormons don’t hurt you. Why do you try to hurt them?”
Apparently you don’t live in Utah.
I loved your post. As a former Mormon, this has brought up many thoughts, but I see much has been said already. The thing that stands out the most is simply my own emotional response (sorry, I know emoting isn’t really the focus of this site). When raised Mormon, and I suspect the same is true of most religions, I’d always been counseled not to question but to have faith. And to stay away from that anti-Mormon literature. It will poisen my mind.
I didn’t realize until my mid-twenties that what they are really asking is to put aside all that creative critical thinking and dumb yourself to absurdity.
But that said, the lifestyle and community is simple and clean. For many, that is an oasis in a tumultuous world.
I haven’t read the Abanes book, but it sounds like he hasn’t observed modern Mormonism. While the church states that they don’t bend with the fashion of the times, they have become much more mainstream in relation to their rebellious past. All of the Mormons I know are a very patriotic group and the US government has nothing to fear. I’ve learned all my life that we are to obey the law of the land (my husband was trying to find the scriptural reference to that – but now that we’re apostate, we’re a little out of practice). I think it’s amusing that the practice of storing food and supplies is viewed to be anti-government outside the church.
I think food storage began as preparation for Armegeddon, but for most, that is very abstract. Storing food and supplies is a practical suggestion that supports the wisdom of self-reliance. It is to get one through tough times. Growing up in a family of eight with a father that was frequently out of work, our food storage was a neccessity – it kept us off welfare.
Living in New York after the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, we were frequently reminded to have our 72 hour emergency pack readily available. This is the backpack stored in our coat closet that contained food, water, and first aid supplies. Living on an island, it would take less than a few days for the city to run out of food if supplies were cut off for any reason.
Imagine if everyone who couldn’t evacuate New Orleans before the hurricane showed up at the Superdome with their 72 hour emergency backpack, the situation surely would not have been so dire.
I know my comments are late, but still wanted to add my two-cents. Most of the comments intimidate the hell out of me – how do you all get the time to read so much? I’m envious. That, and I love and hate your site. But it always gets me thinking and typically fuels some pretty raucous debate between my husband and I. Carry on friend :)
I just wanted to add a Mormon perspective to this article. In regards to the title, I have posted a article discussing the LDS church’s true teachings of the Godhead and multiple gods:
http://drewemmick.blogspot.com/2005/12/understanding-godhead.html
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GREETINGS!!!
All I can say is — Wow. Quite a review. I shall be brief and to the point so as to not take up valuable space.
1. I agree and appreciate much of what you had to say, and was grateful for what I perceived as your own attempts at being fair (alof us can only make our best attempts because I have yet to meet anyone who is completely unbiased – that animal does not exist, IMHO).
2. With regard to my own faith, bear in mind that this was not a book on Christianity and its history. It was a book on Mormonism and its history. Were I to write a book on my own faith, I would (hopefully) try to be as unbiased as possible and raise objections to those aspects of the “Church” and the “faith” that are equally as disturbing: e.g., the number of so-called “Christians” who fought against Civil Rights, the Crusades, the earth being 6,000 years old, and a whole smattering of outrageous prophecies concerning the end-times (and yes, that kind of talk from end-time pundits DOES bother me). I have, in fact, often called out those “evangelicals” whose teachings I found to be either inconsistent with the Bible or outright dangerous (see, for instance, my two books “End-Tme Visions” and also “American Militias: Rebellion, Racism, and Religion”).
3. I am not, contrary to a couple comments you made in passing, enraged at mormons or Mormonism. I just feel that people whould have the truth when they are making decisions for their lives that are as serious as a personal faith. Sadly, members of the LDS Church (including Mitt Romney) are usually not very forthright in expressing EXACTLY what they really believe. They will use similar language as Christians, which causes the general public to equate them with what is usually thought of as a “Christian,” while at the same time they hold beliefs that are radically different than Christianity. That is simply not fair. And it is not truthful. I am more saddened than I am enraged.
Well, that’s about it. This is an awfully nice website. Grats!!!
MERRY CHRISTMAS.