Adventures in Mormonism

“Brethren, there is no meeting in the Church so unimportant that it cannot begin on time, and there is no meeting in the Church so important that it cannot end on time.”

– J. Reuben Clark III, a counselor in my BYU Stake Presidency, to the priesthood leadership of my BYU ward, circa 1976

Pres. Clark (a BYU classics professor and the son of J. Reuben Clark Jr.) uttered those words in our BYU ward PEC meeting being held as part of our ward conference back when I was a BYU undergrad. The PEC meeting had been late in starting for reasons I don’t fully recall, but I certainly recall Pres. Clark’s rebuke once we did get started. I cited his remarks in the comments to this posting over at By Common Consent after seeing that the winner of the “Mormon happiness is…” poll was “…when church finishes 10 minutes early” (42%).

In the same comments, I talked about Lou Hampton, who became branch president of the District of Columbia Branch while Sandra and I were living there (and later bishop when the DC Branch became the Chevy Chase Ward). This was Lou’s third time as a bishop, and one of the changes he immediately instituted was that all meetings begin on time and ended on time, if not sooner. In fact, one of his first acts was to go through the entire chapel and ensure that the clocks were all synchronized and set to the correct time.

At the time that Lou became branch president, our schedule started with Priesthood and Relief Society meetings, and both meetings were well known for starting 10 to 20 minutes late. Lou worked diligently with both organizations to get them to start on time; as he did so, members started showing up on time as well.

Correspondingly, our meeting schedule ended with Sacrament meeting. Lou always took a minute with the speakers before the meeting started letting them know how much time they had and when he expected them to be done. He would do this with all the speakers in order to avoid the problem of an earlier speaker using up so much time that the later speakers had little left.

Lou always started Sacrament meeting on time, regardless of who might still be milling around in the pews; again, the members quickly learned to watch the clock and to sit down promptly. During the meeting itself, Lou would put a note on the pulpit or, should that fail to work, tap the current speaker on the back to indicate that it was time to wrap up. He would even do this with High Council speakers; as he rightly pointed out, he was still the presiding authority at the meeting, not the High Council representative. He did, however, forebear from interrupting any member of the District (and later Stake) Presidency.

Likewise, Lou would bring Fast & Testimony meeting to a close right on time, even if there were people still on the stand. That bothered me some at first, but I came to realize that Lou’s concern was for the congregation as a whole. It also gave us all an incentive to bear our testimonies sooner in the meeting, rather than later, and to keep our testimonies brief and to the point, so as to allow time for others. (One other thing: Lou always had a large printed sheet laying on the pulpit during Fast & Testimony meeting that said, “Please state your name.” This was a great help, particularly as the branch — and then ward — grew by leaps and bounds.)

On those occasions when the (regular) Sacrament meeting speakers ended early, Lou did not feel the need to fill up the remaining time, either by speaking himself or by calling upon others to speak. Instead, we simply ended Sacrament meeting (and thus our entire block) early. The members quickly caught on, and so again kept their remarks short and to the point. As a result, we regularly ended anywhere from 5 to 15 (and sometimes even 20) minutes early.

Lou kept the same discipline in the various leadership meetings (bishopric, PEC, ward council, etc.). We started on time, we moved quickly through the agenda, and we dismissed as soon as all pertinent issues had been covered. None of this indicated a lack of concern on Lou’s part for the branch/ward or its members; on the contrary, Lou did this precisely so that he could spend as much time as he could in personal ministry to the members. When I became one of his counselors, I quickly discovered that he delegated literally everything that he could to us for that same reason.

It is interesting to see the example set by the general Church leadership in General Conference, particularly under Pres. Hinckley. Of course, General Conference meetings always begin on time, but for the last several years, most sessions have ended several minutes early, particularly when Pres. Hinckley himself was the closing speaker.

I appreciated Lou’s example precisely because it reflected what I have tried to follow since hearing Pres. Clark’s rebuke some 30+ years ago. I’ve done my best to keep meetings on-time and brief both in my Church responsibilities as well as my professional life. I must confess that I have chafed some since moving to Colorado; our ward here is wonderful, but for most of the past 2.5 years that we’ve lived here, Sacrament has been both late starting and often late getting out (cutting into my time as Gospel Doctrine and now Gospel Essentials teacher), and my High Priest Group meetings are usually late ending as well.

I have recently been released as the Gospel Doctrine teacher and called as the ward mission leader. I’ve let the full-time and ward missionaries know that our missionary correlation meeting will be held right after the end of the block, and that I do not expect it to last more than 15 minutes. That was greeted with some joy and relief, as apparently the previous missionary correlation meetings were being held on a weeknight and regularly lasted a hour or more. I’ve been a ward mission leader several times before, and I’m pretty confident that we can cover what we need to in those 15 minutes; any follow-up discussions can be done one-on-one over the phone or in person. Our time is best spent in actual service to others, not hashing out details ad infinitum. I believe that’s true for all our meetings. ..bruce..

There is a curious religious transition that occurs among the Nephites about a century before the birth of Christ. Up until then, the Nephites appear to have been following the law of Moses, in spite of a clear and unprecedented Christology introduced by Lehi₁, Nephi₁ and Jacob in the 5th century BC and re-emphasized by King Benjamin around 124 BC just before he abdicated in favor of his son Mosiah₂. And even though Nephi₁ clearly indicated the need for baptism in following the Savior’s (future) example, there is no record of baptism being practiced for roughly half a millennium afterwards. Instead, the Nephite civilization during that time appears to be a continual kingship with prophets calling the people to repentance.

Those two traditions appear to merge with King Mosiah₁, “being warned of the lord”, leading a Nephite exodus from the land of Nephi to the land of Zarahemla. Mosiah₁ continues as a prophet/king, interpreting the Jaredite (stone) engravings “by the gift and power of God.” His son, King Benjamin, clearly continues as a prophet/king; as noted above, he has a significant vision of the coming Messiah and puts his people under covenant to take upon themselves the name of Christ — though still with no mention of baptism. Mosiah₂ appears to continue that prophet/king tradition, though there is less indication of any revelation or prophecy on his part (however, see Mosiah 21:28).

Read the rest of this entry »

Over at Mormon Matters, I ran across a post by Jamie Trwth with a link to his comic strip “Latte Day Saints“. Here’s one of my favorites so far:

Heh. I’ve said for years that anyone who thinks that Mormons are mindless sheep has clearly never served in an LDS leadership position.

Jamie’s post at Mormon Matters is also worth reading, when he — as a black Latter-day Saints — describes the anti-LDS discrimination he’s encountered in Alaska when trying to register his child in private Christian schools. ..bruce..

Outside (and some inside) observers of the LDS Church sometimes hint darkly at the Church’s great wealth, directly stating or leaving others to infer that this somehow reflects greed, corruption, or insensitivity on the part of LDS Church leaders. Peggy Stack, in today’s Salt Lake Tribune, points out yet another way in which the LDS Church differs from many other Christian denominations: the modesty of the homes that its Presidents have dwelt in:

Sometime soon, new LDS Church President Thomas S. Monson likely will move into the church-owned “presidential apartment.”

Though church spokesman Scott Trotter declined to say when or whether Monson will move, his three predecessors all lived on the top floor of Gateway Apartments on State Street in Salt Lake City, across from the LDS Administration Building and within a block of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and the LDS temple.

Monson and his wife, Frances, currently live in a modest home in Holladay, which the couple built about 40 years ago. . . .

Spencer W. Kimball lived on Laird Street in Harvard/Yale neighborhood. His Mormon neighbors enjoyed the proximity to their spiritual leader.

“He seemed like any of our good neighbors,” said Mavis Oswald, whose husband was Kimball’s bishop. “He talked to children and winked at them while sitting on the stand [behind the pulpit]. He and his wife took walks in the neighborhood, visited with people and patted the dogs.”

Eventually, Kimball, too, had to be moved to Hotel Utah because of security concerns and declining health. He died there in November 1985.

Isn’t it interesting that for all the Church’s wealth, you never hear of any financial scandals or excesses on the part of its leaders involving Church funds? ..bruce..

I use SiteMeter to track hits and traffic to this blog. One of the things SiteMeter lets me do is to see the search words and phrases that lead people here. I was looking at that just a few minutes ago and saw that someone had arrived at this blog by doing a Google search on the words “Mike Huckabee and the Mormon Anti-Christ” (this post, which I wrote some weeks back, was the second entry listed by Google). The phrase “the Mormon Anti-Christ” I interpreted to mean the person that the Latter-day Saints might consider to be “the” AntiChrist mentioned in the Epistles of John in the New Testament (and hinted at in Revelation, some Pauline epistles, the Gospels, and Daniel; see this entry in the Catholic Encyclopedia). In other words, I suspect the person was wondering if Mormons might think that Mike Huckabee could be the “AntiChrist.”

Simple answer: no. That’s because Mormons, unlike many Evangelicals, don’t really have much of a concept of there being a single, literal human (or demonic) “AntiChrist” prior to the Savior’s second coming. The concept (much less the actual phrase) does not show up at all in the various passages in LDS-specific scriptures that deal with events surrounding the Second Coming (e.g., relevant portions of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price). The term itself does appear twice (in a short span of verses) in the Book of Mormon, but it’s used as an adjective to describe a known individual (Korihor) in Book of Mormon times (~74 BC) who denied and preached against the idea of the Son of God coming to earth as an atoning Messiah.

Donald and Jay Parry, in Understanding the Signs of the Times (Deseret Book, 1999), spend a few pages (pp. 211-214) discussing the LDS concepts of “antichrist” and note “that there are many antichrists in every age”. They see the “man of sin, the son of perdition” spoke of by Paul as being Satan himself. They see the descriptions of the beasts in Revelation as being “in the likeness of the kingdoms of the earth” (citing the Joseph Smith revision of Revelation 13:1) and go on to conclude “both the beasts and the antichrist are individuals, nations, and philosophies.” That sounds about right, but I’m interested if other Latter-day Saints have run across different concepts regarding the AntiChrist within LDS literature, discourses and/or folk doctrine. ..bruce..

A brief postscript: I get the impression from what little research I’ve done that Catholics are much more skeptical about the idea of there being a literal, individual, powerful AntiChrist as a precursor to the Savior’s second coming — probably because, as the Catholic Encyclopedia entry cited above states, Protestants have been claiming for centuries that the Pope is the AntiChrist. What makes that so interesting is that in most horror movies about the rise of the AntiChrist — e.g., “The Omen” — it seems that it’s almost always the Catholics who are fighting against him. On the other hand, it seems like there’s often a group of renegade or corrupted Catholic priests and nuns who are supporting and protecting him. So for all us Mormons who complain about media bias, realize that it could be a lot worse — no one’s made a movie that shows the AntiChrist being born in Spanish Fork, attending BYU, and serving an LDS mission, before going to work for the Marriott Corporation, all the while being protected by a 21st century band of Danites. Yet. Hmm…maybe I’ll write a screenplay.

I even have a title for it: “Oh My Heck!”

In the (out-of-print) anthology To The Glory of God (Deseret Book, 1974), Hugh Nibley had an entry entitled “Brigham Young on the Environment” (pp. 3-29). The entire article is worth reading, but I’ve always been intrigued by the following passage, which suggests that the Article of Faith that states that “the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory” is talking about work that we will have to do (Nibley’s citations are from the Journal of Discourses and indicate volumn:page:year):

If the earth still retained its paradisiacal glory, we would be justified in asking, “What do we do now?” But that glory has departed, and the first step in the rebuilding of Zion is to help bring it back. “Who placed the dark stain of sin upon this fair creation? Man. Who but man shall remove the foul blot and restore all things to their primeval purity and innocence? [That is a large order, an impossible assignment, and Brigham admits it.] But can he do this independent of heavenly aid? He cannot. To aid him in this work heavenly grace is here.” (10:301:64.) Fortunately it is God’s work, in which he allows us to participate. “The greatest acts of the mighty men,” said Joseph Smith, have been disastrous. “Before them the earth was a paradise, and behind them a desolate wilderness. . . . The designs of God, on the other hand” are that “the earth shall yield its increase, resume its paradisean glory, and become as the garden of the Lord.” It is a clear-cut and fundamental doctrine: “We believe . . . that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.” (Tenth Article of Faith.) that, however, according to the same Article of Faith, will be the last step of five in the rehabilitation of the earth, and according to Brigham Young, it was to be a long hard pull: “Not many generations will pass away before the days of man will again return. But it will take generations to entirely eradicate the influences of deleterious substances. This must be done before we can attain our paradaical [sic] state.” (8:64:60.)

Now, in fairness, I think that Nibley is misapplying that last quote a bit, though he may not have had the full paragraph on his note card (and appears to have a typo) — but the original, complete quote is in and of itself interesting and does indeed have environmental application and again is decades (if not a full century) ahead of its time:

If the days of man are to begin to return, we must cease all extravagant living. When men live to the age of a tree, their food will be fruit. Mothers, to produce offspring full of life and days, must cease drinking liquor, tea, and coffee, that their systems may be free from bad effects. If every woman in this Church will now cease drinking tea, coffee, liquor, and all other powerful stimulants, and live upon vegetables, &c., not many generations will pass away before the days of man will again return. But it will take generations to entirely eradicate the influences of deleterious substances. This must be done before we can attain our paradisaical state, for the Lord will bring again Zion to its paradisaical state.

May God grant that we may see and enjoy it. Amen. (JD 8:64)

Something to think about. ..bruce..

EGG ON MY FACE: Kathleen Flake is LDS. My fault for leaping to the assumption that a professor of religious history at Vanderbilt was not LDS. Thanks for the comments that corrected me. Sigh….

As Latter-day Saints, we (well, I, but I suspect most of you as well) reflexively brace for misunderstandings and misrepresentations in non-LDS coverage of our doctrines, society, and practices. So it was refreshing — and moving [but mistaken on my part!] — to read this insightful piece by Kathleen Flake from the On Religion website about President Hinckley’s funeral:

The Latter-day Saints buried their prophet on Saturday. Thousands attended the service in person and millions more faithful watched in chapels around the globe, as well as on the internet. What they saw was an unusually personal ceremony for a very public man who led and to large degree defined the contemporary Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Notwithstanding the numbers and titles of participants, Gordon Hinckley’s funeral was a family affair both in word and sacrament. It was an extraordinary display of what makes Mormonism tick.

Be sure to read the whole thing. Hat tip to the Deseret News LDS Newsline. ..bruce..

The issue of potential LDS support for Obama continues to bubble around the bloggernacle; see for example here and here for opposing views. I will note for the record that I haven’t on this blog stated that I would support Obama or that I thought other Latter-day Saints should. What I have stated, repeatedly, is that with the right pro-active outreach from Obama himself, he could well win over Utah against a McCain/Huckabee or even a McCain/not-Huckabee ticket.

Here’s the interesting part. I’m in Utah this week, visiting relatives (kids, grandkids, in-laws, etc.), but I made some time today to have lunch with an old friend/colleague whom I’ve known since I taught at BYU some 20+ years ago. We exchange e-mails a few times a year, but it’s probably been a decade since we’ve actually seen each other face to face.

Anyway, we’re sitting at lunch today, and out of the blue, my friend — I’ll call him Bill — starts to raise the issue of the upcoming election. I’ll note for the record that he has never read this blog and he hasn’t read my other blog for a few months. Also, this is the issue he chose to raise; I had said absolutely nothing about politics or the election. And yet he proceeds to explain his feelings regarding the Republican primary race, particularly regarding the anti-Mormon aspect to it, then tells me that he’s been reading Obama’s book (The Audacity of Hope), which he says is actually quite rational and even-handed (his words). The upshot: he tells me that he’s voted a straight Republican party ticket for 25+ years, but he’s seriously considering voting for Obama in the fall, particularly if Huckabee is on the Republican ticket, but even if it’s just McCain plus someone else.

As I said elsewhere, the plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data’. But it was startling to have Bill bring this up out of the blue and — with no input or prompting from me, and as I said, never having read this blog — recite to me almost exactly the same decision-making process that I’ve been describing here and that others have described elsewhere.  This is a self-described staunch LDS conservative, well-educated (PhD) and established in his profession, with a large family at home. Yet he’s ready to vote for Obama for all the reasons that we’ve been kicking around.

For what it’s worth.  ..bruce..

P.S. If you are interested in my personal political thinking, see this post on my other blog.

GOP candidate Mike Huckabee now says that he was misunderstood in making what were perceived as anti-Mormon comments:

WASHINGTON — Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says it is “unfounded” for anyone to say he has alienated the Mormon community or that he used rival Mitt Romney’s LDS faith as a wedge issue.

Huckabee, talking to reporters over breakfast in Washington Tuesday just two blocks from the White House, blamed a single remark he made to The New York Times Magazine last year — when he asked whether Mormons believed Jesus and Satan are brothers — as the cause of the angst in the Mormon community.

The LDS Church issued a statement following that remark that acknowledged the belief that Jesus and Satan were both children of God, as well as all of humanity. Still, Huckabee’s comment was seen by many as pejorative.

Some members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have charged that Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor, was tapping into wariness about Mormons in campaigning against Romney. Some even raised the specter in letters to the editor that they would vote Democratic if Huckabee were the GOP nominee.

Huckabee said Tuesday he would have concern if anyone said he had estranged the Mormon community. 

Fine. If Huckabee is serious, here’s all he needs to to: publicly and unequivocally state “Yes, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a Christian church.”

Not holding my breath.

In the meantime, Martin E. Marty — who, unlike Huckabee, actually knows a fair amount about the LDS Church — has his own observations about what went on in the GOP primaries:

Now that Governor Romney is off the campaign trail — we don’t do any columns of candidates on the trail — we can, without commenting on him or the part his church and faith played in his demise, do a retrospective on the Mormon-hate that blighted air waves, the internet, and some printed quotations while he was spotlit…

Taking testimony about the evils of Mormonism by ex-Mormons is likely to be as objective as it is if it comes against Catholicism by ex-Catholics. Were it our calling, we could find profound fault with many policies and actions of some Latter-Day-Saints or members and leaders of other faiths. My own company, that of historians, is in the business of telling stories about others’ stories. No one is to be uncritical, where there is often much to criticize. But criticism is one thing; hate-speech and untruths are another.

Amen, Martin.  ..bruce..

It was via an article by Rob Graham over at the Beehive Standard Weekly that I first learned of the outreach by Barack Obama campaign personnel towards Latter-day Saints here in the West. Now Rob has put together a rather lengthy commentary summarizing what’s been kicking around on various news sources and blogs: if Obama (w/out Clinton) is the Democratic candidate this fall, large numbers of Mormons may abandon the GOP and vote for Obama instead:

 The many Mormons I have spoken to in attempting to obtain a read on how Mormons will vote in November are universally stating that they will either not vote for the Republican candidate, which is likely to be McCain, or they will vote for Obama as a candidate who will include Mormons in his campaign. If the candidate is Huckabee, the Mormons will turn out in droves to reject him as he openly used religion against the Mormons, which would result in a heavy vote for Obama.

Obama has taken note. In Obama’s Super Tuesday speech, he made it very clear that his candidacy is inclusive of disaffected Republicans, as well as those who share differing religious views — e.g., code word for Mormons. He is a smart character and he knows what it feels like to be on the receiving end of bigotry. He perceives he can tap into that well and turn the Mormon vote in his direction. He can also bridge to the Mormons on race as Mormons have been viewed as intolerant because of excluding their priesthood leadership responsibilities where the rank-and-file Mormon population is far from racist and as a group they have been seeking a way to heal the perceived racist policies of the past. Many prominent black Americans, such as Gladys Knight, who have joined the church have found racial ignorance in the church’s mostly white and Hispanic population, but not intolerance or open racism in the church. With some patience, Obama can appeal to the members of the Mormon faith and become a popular symbol for overcoming the church’s past perceived isolationist and racially-based policies.

Of course, Obama sees the possibilities and recently sent his wife out to Salt Lake City to meet with two members of the Mormon Church hierarchy and had photographs taken with them. It was all smiles and mutual understanding. No one would have thought the Mormons would embrace so openly and warmly a black American candidate and his family, but bigotry, religious intolerance and racism does create a common cause and mutual understanding among its victims.

Like Evangelicals, Mormons also have their differences with liberals, but the feeling is different with Obama as he is reaching out and acknowledging the differences, but emphasizing the similarities while assuring Mormons that they would be treated with respect in expressing their differences. A close analysis of Obama’s policies finds some common ground which could result in broad-based support from Mormons. For instance, the Mormon emphasis on family values, education, welfare, compassion, self-reliance and the like are all significant political similarities.

Be sure to read the entire article. Graham pulls all the pieces together to a level of detail that no one has to date, at least not that I’ve seen.  I fully believe that with some relatively modest but explicit outreach towards Latter-day Saints, Obama could indeed gain hundreds of thousands of votes in key Western states, including Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Colorado, and California. Given how few votes the last few Presidential elections have hinged upon, that could be enough to help Obama win the Presidency.  ..bruce..