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).

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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!”