I seems that no matter where you live, there is either fairly well sized contingency or Mormons in the area, or regular visits from 16-18 year old "Elders" of the church passing through wanted to stop and share their gospel message with you. The question I want to pose to you, so that you ponder this the next time you are approached by Mormon evangelists is not so difficult and philosophical as to whether not Mormonism is a cult, whether it is "Christian", or if Joseph Smith really had an authentic spiritual revelation. I want you to ponder something a lot more simple than that. All I want you to think of is this: Are they telling me the truth?
We know that Mormonism is not a religion of absolutes. Of this we can be sure. Why? Simple. Much of the Mormon doctrine has changed since the 1830 encounter that Joseph Smith had with the Angel Moroni (oh, wait, or was it a different angel, or was it God Himself, or was it a "deity", there are 6 different authenticated versions of this story...), and not just small stuff. Take for example the doctrine of polygamy, or as the politically correct say, "plural marriage. This was a doctrine authorized by God Himself in a vision to Joseph Smith (after we was caught cavorting with a 14 year old girl, and was later "over-turned" (God changed His mind I guess?). How about blacks in the church? Their scriptures tell that blacks are a curse, made by God to be black for their failure.
But more so, consider this. The Mormon Church doctrine, like that of Islam, encourages lying. They call it "lying in the Lord", and it is encouraged to protect the faith. Sorry, my God doesn't need me to lie for him. But, don't take my word for it, here's a great article by Joanna Brooks called,
"Does Mormonism Encourage LDS People to Lie?" Read it for yourself.
Newsweek/Daily Beast reporter Jamie Reno published a provocative
interview
this week with Sue Emmett, a direct descendent of Brigham Young and a
former LDS Church member, that plumbs controversial aspects of Mormon
faith and culture, including the status of women in the faith and a
tendency among some Mormons to manage the way they speak with
non-Mormons about complicated aspects of our history and religious
practice.
Flagging concern about how this highly managed communications style
has impacted the Romney campaign and might shape a Romney presidency,
Reno quotes a former LDS Church employee, who states, “Every Mormon
grows up with the idea that it’s OK to lie if it’s for a higher cause.”
That doesn’t quite ring true to my own experience, though I do
understand well the truth-swerving phenomenon Emmet and Reno describe.
In fact, I cringe when I see the way it connects to Romney’s own
tendency to avoid frank disclosure—this week, it’s tax returns—and the
frequent charges that ambition and opportunism rather than consistent
principle shape his policy stances.
Of course, it’s nothing shocking that an American minority group
might develop its own way of talking to outsiders. But in some Mormon
circles one does hear bitter accusations of “lying for the Lord,” and
sometimes one does witness among Mormon people today the remnants of a
deep-seated sense that telling a complete, straightforward story is not
always good for LDS interests.
The most penetrating assessment of this
Mormon cultural phenomenon comes from linguistic anthropologist Daymon
Smith, who ties defensive communication mechanisms—telling outsiders one
story in order to protect another version of the story for insiders—to
Mormon polygamy and particularly to the decades in the late nineteenth
century when federal prosecution of polygamy sent many Mormon men on the
“underground.” (Read an excellent summary of his dissertation here.)
Double-speaking on polygamy continues. I myself wrestle with it
whenever I’m obliged to talk about Mormon polygamy in public. Since
1890, LDS Church leaders and members have stated publicly and repeatedly
that we do not practice polygamy, that the practice has officially
ended. This is an earnest effort to distinguish contemporary members of
the mainstream LDS Church from ultra-orthodox splinter groups of
fundamentalist Mormons. And it is true that any Mormon who were to marry
and cohabitate with a two living spouses today would be excommunicated.
But polygamy has not been eliminated from Mormon life. (I’ve discussed this topic at length here.)
The fact is that current Church policy does allow for a living man to
be “sealed” (married for eternity) to more than one woman at a time.
For example, a widower or divorced man who has elected to terminate his
civil marriage but not his LDS temple marriage is permitted to marry
another woman in an LDS temple with the assurance that both first and
second marriages would be eternal. The same is not possible under
current Church policies for living LDS women who have been widowed or
civilly divorced.
This may seem like a technicality. But when combined with the fact
that polygamy has never been renounced as a doctrinal principle by the
Church and that it remains on the books in the Doctrine and Covenants, a
book of LDS scripture, it fosters a belief among many mainstream LDS
people that polygamous marriages will be a fact of the afterlife. Some
mainstream Mormons dutifully anticipate polygamy in heaven. Others take
an agnostic view. But many others quietly harbor feelings of grief,
anger, and worry. I have experienced these feelings myself, and I hear
them from other Mormons all the time. All the time Mormon men
and women ask, “What kind of God would expect me to live in an eternal
marriage that I would hate?” Not the God I believe in.
Polygamy remains a fact of mainstream Mormon thought and
belief—whether as a doctrinal remnant or as a live article of faith, no
one knows for sure. And the tensions created by the dissonance between
the Church’s public denial of polygamy and the private continuance of
the doctrine creates tensions that lead more than a few Mormons to leave
the faith.
Given this complicated and conflicted situation, what should a Mormon say when she is asked whether we practice polygamy?
A few weeks ago, I sat in front of a radio microphone for the BBC
program “The World”; with me on the program was a high-ranking public
relations official for the LDS Church. Together, we did the same program
twice: two back-to-back hours of the same hour about Mormonism, one
time for the American audiences, and a second time for the whole world.
During the first hour, taping for American audiences, when the
inevitable polygamy question came, I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to
convey in a soundbite the terrible complexity of Mormonism’s
relationship to polygamy: how while it is true that Mormons today no
longer plurally cohabitate, polygamy has never been eradicated from our
doctrine, our scriptures, and even from current policy, and that this
causes many Mormon women and men a great deal of worry and resentment.
My description sounded jumbled alongside the clear and familiar official
message: no, we do not practice polygamy, not at all. I felt
self-conscious and incoherent and nervous about publicly contradicting
Church PR officials, but also determined not to obscure the more
complicated and difficult truth. When we deny those truths, their
private emotional costs multiply.
Then came the second hour of programming. Our audience in this second
hour was not just BBC’s American listeners, but the world. I thought
about the global reach of the BBC—the reach of the former British
empire. When the question about polygamy came, I imagined listeners in
Wales and Bangladesh and Kenya, listeners who had no concept of
Mormonism, perhaps, beyond the most rudimentary and familiar
stereotypes; including nineteenth-century Mormon polygamy. I squeezed my
eyes shut. “No,” I said, “we no longer practice polygamy,” agreeing
this time around with the LDS Church public-relations official. As I
did, I registered an old, familiar, sinking feeling. I tried to tell
myself it was the best I could do.
Was I lying for the Lord? Or was I a regular Mormon struggling to
tell a complicated story to a world that often reduces us to
stereotypes? What should I have said? Mitt Romney has said, “I can’t
imagine anything more awful than polygamy”—even though polygamy remains a
live element in Mormon doctrine and practice. Is that what he really
believes? Is that what he felt he had to say? Is this the best we can
do?
Sources:
http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/3913intro.htm
http://www.mrm.org/first-vision
