Religion: A Glossary

Agnostic – Someone who is an atheist but is too chicken to admit it to themselves or others.

Allah – The world’s second most popular imaginary friend. Hobbies include Arab linguistic and ethnic supremacy, vengeance and mercy, and inspiring middle-aged failures to develop malignant late-blooming megalomania.

Apologetics – A misleading term which sounds as if it consists of a person apologising for the negative aspects of a faith system, when in fact it is quite the opposite.

Atheist – A person whose life decisions and moral compass are not assisted by an imaginary friend, and thus exhibits a better grasp on reality than a Believer.

Believer – A person who has been deluded by themselves and authority figures into denying reality in favour of a softer, gentler fantasy in which death is not real and the injustices of life will be corrected in the afterlife with lavish rewards for themselves and heavy punishment for their enemies.

Bible – A collection of pro-imaginary-friend propaganda assembled by a collection of politicians in the third century to encourage more efficient administration of the dwindling Roman Empire via arbitrary social controls (see: Church).

Church – 1. A building used for the purpose of collective communication with an imaginary friend. 2. The broader affiliation of people with the same imaginary friend.

Cult – 1. A faith-based organisation with unusually deceptive recruiting techniques and prohibitively difficult barriers to disaffiliation. 2. The term used to describe a Church you do not like.

Faith – The wilfully ignorant position that things which do not exist do, in fact, exist.

God – The most popular generic name of an imaginary friend utilised by adults for the purposes of self-justification. Individuals engage in imaginary conversation (see “prayer”) with this fanciful character to avoid thinking about how death gives them the willies, how insignificant we really all are in the universe, and the responsibilities that go with being a sentient species.

Holiday – A calendar event which, deep in the mists of history, was a cause for extra devotion to some aspect of faith but is now an excuse to sell mattresses at 40% off.

Prayer – Talking to an imaginary friend in order to visualise the magical materialisation of one’s wishes. Used as an alternative to getting up off of one’s arse and actually doing something to cause those wishes to become reality.

Prayer Breakfast – A gathering of fat middle class people for the purpose of stuffing their faces with refined carbohydrates and smugly congratulating themselves for their sincere belief that their actions are magically making the world a better place.

Qu’ran – The ramblings of an epileptic in the throes of a mid-life crisis, passed off as the teachings of the world’s second most popular imaginary friend.

Torah – A bizarre collection of rules that make no sense whatsoever, such as bans on consumption of bacon and the prohibition of the wearing of polyester, which have led inevitably to such psychotic regulations such as the proper disposal of nail clippings to prevent miscarriage by any pregnant women that may be nearby. Also includes stories glorifying rape, murder, ethnic cleansing, and the neurotic foot-stamping jealousy of Yahweh when it comes to inviting other imaginary friends to join a party.

Unbeliever – A perjorative term used by Believers to describe people who don’t talk to their imaginary friend. Sub-terms include Kuffar, Infidel, Apikoros, and Apostate.

Yahweh – The world’s most popular imaginary friend. Hobbies include genocide, the ethnic supremacy of Hebrews, and creating detailed lists of justifications for capital punishment. Enjoys sexually assaulting underage girls and executing the first born offspring of his prophets, enemies, and himself.

There’s a lot more terms we can collect here. Add your own definitions below!

The Book of Abraham

A little something I cooked up to demonstrate that doctrine that privileges the few over the many has consequences that can’t be ignored.

New Directive: No More Independent Sacraments

I’ve managed to patch things up a bit recently with my family. Recently I went on holiday with the family and Mr. Molly. One of the things we were both concerned about was Sunday, when the family would have their own brief church meeting. I do not know if any of my family members know that I am no longer a member of the LDS church and so in their view should not take the sacrament. Mr. Molly is a Nevermo, so he excused himself to take a walk whilst the rest of the family met. I stayed because it was the politically appropriate thing to do.

I was asked to lead the music, which I felt comfortable doing. After the ranking male priesthood member started the meeting several younger family members were asked to bear their testimonies. This is something that’s always bothered me because assigning someone to bear a testimony violates the idea that testimonies should be voluntary and impromptu, given if and when the person feels it is appropriate. One family member still living with her parents is a closeted mentally ex-Mormon. I struggled with two conflicting emotions as I listened to her testimony sharing her gratitude for the men in her life who had the priesthood. On one hand, she was saying all the right words and the older family members were genuinely moved. On the other, she was talking absolute rubbish. I told her later that if it didn’t sound too cynical, I was very impressed by her acting ability. She thanked me heartily and reiterated her wish to move out as soon as she was old enough so she could stop pretending to believe.

A moment of great relief came when the bishop leading our family meeting informed us that Salt Lake has recently decreed that it is no longer permissible for the sacrament to be administered at private gatherings of family or friends. Sacrament may now only be administered during a regulation LDS Sacrament meeting. Until now, it was the norm for families to administer their own sacrament if they were away on holiday or somehow unable to be at church on a Sunday. I watched the faces of my family very carefully when this information was conveyed. The look on each face was a mixture of surprise, sadness, and submission.

I have a few questions for members, former members and non-members:

Do you feel that this change is doctrinal?
Do you feel that this change is appropriate?
Do you feel that this change was necessary?
Why do you think this change was made?
Do you think this change was made to discourage LDS people from being away from chapels on Sundays?

If anyone has more detailed information on this policy, such as whether or not it applies to Sacrament administered privately to those who are infirm and unable to come to church, I would be interested to know that as well.

Halloween in Sunday School

The last calling I had at church was as a Sunday School teacher. At the time I was called, my testimony had already unravelled, but I was desperately trying to keep it (and my marriage) together. The more I studied church doctrine and history and the clearer my understanding of the church became, the more my testimony collapsed. Teaching out of the manual left me feeling incredibly conflicted. I now knew the lesson plans contained many things that were demonstrably false. I was beginning to have doubts about whether or not it was ethical for me to continue in my calling when I had no testimony of the things I was supposed to be teaching. But I tried to find ways to make it work. I ignored large chunks of the lesson plan and tried to grasp at something good and universally true about each lesson. By cherry-picking materials to teach and carefully vetting my language I could try to teach what I hoped were good, ethical ideas without endorsing the Book of Mormon as a historical record. I supplemented the lessons with my own material and by inviting commentary from members of the class. The more time the class spent in discussion, the less I had to say and the less I felt like a hypocrite.

I noticed one week that the lesson that fell just before Halloween contained some material that I was particularly uncomfortable with. It promoted a demonstrably false view of ancient American history and contained racist ideas that did not mesh with accepted scientific research. So I did something rather tricky. I decided to devote a chunk of the lesson to the history of Halloween, which would allow me to shorten the intended lesson, leaving no time for me to teach the questionable content. I knew at first it would be hard to hook the audience, with their righteous fear of evil pagans and all, but I also know that I could play on the latent anti-Catholic prejudice that Mormons seem to have, and also touch on the teaching that all faith systems have some light and truth to them.

The modern holiday is quite different from what Halloween was thousands of years ago. Most ancient agricultural societies celebrated their new year in the autumn, when the harvest was in. In pre-Roman Europe, the Celtic calendar divided the year into “light” and “dark” halves. So much of “Celtic Religion” gets romanticised and mushed up to fit modern neopagan views that it can be hard to understand what prechristian Celtic beliefs actually were. But what we do know is that Celtic New year fell around Oct. 31, and was a time of celebration, feasting, reciting family lineages, and communing with the spirits of departed ancestors. In Old Irish the holiday was referred to as Samhain. It has survived as Halloween and All Saints’ Day.

Celtic European culture was largely subsumed under Roman rule, but Irish culture retained its older Celtic beliefs for some time. Even after Christianity was adopted, traditional beliefs remained alive and well, arguably until the present day. The ancient Irish didn’t think of the afterlife as most people do today. The “Otherworld” of Irish folklore does not resemble Christian ideas about the dead departing this world permanently. Old Irish beliefs about the dead hold that the departed are all around us, in this world, but invisible to us. Some Mormons also believe that the “spirit world” in which the dead await the final judgment is also here on earth. Samhain celebrations gathered friends and family together, where family lineages were recited, rituals to honour the departed were performed, and hollowed-out turnips guided the spirits of the departed back to their families. It was believed that the veil to the Otherworld grew very thin on this night, and that spirits could visit the living. In this belief system, the dead were viewed very much as ordinary people; some were evil, some were good. The spirits of ancestors were welcomed home, and malicious spirits were warded off.

As the church grew in influence, priests wanted nothing to do with this blasphemous worship of spirits. Our God Is A Jealous God, after all. Those who still observed Celtic new year, mainly in Ireland and Scotland, were taught to frighten away the souls of their ancestors. They had been set straight. They were not honoured loved ones come home to visit; they were devils come to take their souls to hell, and anyone who said otherwise was a nasty horrible witch. Parents began dressing their children in costumes to disguise them from the evil spirits. Demons must be pretty daft to fall for masks and robes, but there it is. I commented that it was a shame that a holiday so focused on genealogy and family togetherness in this world and the world to come was corrupted. Someone commented that we couldn’t expect less from the Great and Abominable Church. At least in the end when superstition about demons chasing people down the street once a year was (mostly) done away with, we were able to have some fun with it again.

But really, it was a holiday all about family togetherness. That’s very much at the heart of everything Mormonism preaches. I commented that I thought it was interesting that the original holiday had been about preserving family unity, which is something we could respect, considering how much time we spent on temple work. While I absolutely enjoyed the fun and games of dressing up, trick-or-treating, and decorating our homes for the modern, corrupted, secularised version of Halloween, I reflected that it was a shame the holiday had lost its overt emphasis on family. I speculated on a few ways that Halloween could still be silly and fun, but also a day for family togetherness. Parents trick-or-treat with children, of course, but I encouraged the class members to think of ways to place an even larger emphasis on family. Suggestions trickled in. One person suggested that, before a family goes out trick-or-treating, the family look at photos of past years and tell stories to help children know more about the fun details of their predecessors’ lives. Others suggested scrapbooking to preserve family memories. All brilliant ideas. One class member spoke up that all faith systems had some light and truth to them, and the older Celtic views were among some of the “plain and precious truths” lost over the years.

There were only ten minutes left at this point in the lesson, so I glossed over the racist, historically false lesson I was supposed to teach and closed the lesson. I apologised impishly for hijacking the real lesson, but felt that once in a while it was fun to teach a holiday-themed lesson. Someone answered that it was fun to learn that there was a way to think about how to infuse a secular holiday with ideas from the gospel. We prayed. The class trotted out, happy and humming with conversation.

I felt satisfied with the lesson that I had taught, but I didn’t feel good about myself. I knew that by covering the parts of the gospel that were rotten, I was only setting up my classmates for the same sort of fall I had taken. But at that point I wasn’t prepared to accept that the Church wasn’t what it said it was. I still wanted it to all be true, very badly. I managed to teach five or six more lessons like that before I asked the bishop to release me. I was honest about the reasons, and he honoured my request, although he tried to talk me out of it, saying I was popular as a teacher and seemed to enjoy it. I cried. I loved teaching. But I couldn’t lie by omission any more.

Sometimes I still miss it, although I think that if I were still teaching today, I wouldn’t feel so bad about being subversive.

Lying for the Lord

Hat tip to The Loathsome Joy for putting up this video and starting this train of thought.

“Lying for the Lord” is a Mormon interpretation of a survival technique used by all religions with utilitarian and totalitarian leanings. It’s no surprise that this concept is part of Catholicism and Islam, the world’s two biggest faith systems, and even less of a surprise that Mormonism, a faith system founded with the goal of taking over the world, would follow along. If becoming the dominant religion and culture on Earth is your goal, then protecting the organisation must be prioritised above truth or doctrine, as outlined by influential BYU Professor Robert Millet:

Islam has a doctrine called Taqiyya, which is the same thing that Robert Millet describes in the video above when he instructs the missionaries to refuse to answer inconvenient questions and only answer the questions a person “should have asked.” If a Muslim finds himself or herself in a position where answering direct questions about their faith would be harmful to the individual or Islam, they are permitted to lie, mislead their questioner, or redirect the conversation around the topic. This is permitted in extreme circumstances, such as a Muslim being forced to renounce their faith, or in settings that are PR-related, such as being questioned about portions of the Koran that advocate violence against non-Muslims. It’s a blanket clause that allows any Muslim to lie, directly or by omission, specifically to protect the greater good of Islam and individual Muslims.

The Catholic Church has had the doctrine of Mental Reservation since the middle ages, which is described as “lying without lying.” It’s not Canon Law, but nobody ever gets punished for doing it and it’s never been officially denounced. This doctrine was the official policy of bishops in Ireland and California who protected paedophile priests through lies of omission. In the California case, a priest explained that those who use Mental Reservation “claim that it is morally justifiable to lie in order to protect the reputation of the institutional church.”

Millet’s Lying for the Lord is, along with Mental Reservation and Taqiyya, a subspecies of Doublethink. People who engage in Doublethink can be frustratingly slippery in a debate. Cherry-picking, straw men, red herrings, avoidance and outright denial are critical weapons in their arsenal to convince you that nobody is lying, and anyway there is nothing to lie about in the first place. To get out of answering a difficult question, you can’t just say “no”. You’ve got to slip around it and muddle the issue until nobody can remember what they were asking about in the first place.

Mormons who consider themselves “True Blue” or “Defenders of the Faith” are accomplished at Doublethink. The overwhelming majority of the information at the FAIR website exhibits this behaviour. Complicated issues are misrepresented, denied, worked around, and lied about in textbook examples of Doublethink. A faithful Mormon who read FAIR’s work and found it confusing and contradictory would be experiencing Cognitive Dissonance, which is what happens when Doublethink fails and your brain starts working. Their entry on Lying for the Lord reads like satire, but because they are serious, it’s just ironic.

Dishonesty will always happen when the success of the organisation is the top priority for its members. If a person’s main loyalty is the organisation then anything that furthers the cause of the organisation, even violating the ethical principles the organisation teaches, is permissible. The Church becomes a false idol. Lying for the Lord happens in the LDS Church. The FLDS do it too, as the doctrine is part of the shared heritage of the two churches. There are many Mormons, Muslims and Catholics who may think they aren’t Lying for the Lord. However, failure to condemn those who engage in this practise are giving consent through silence. That in itself seems to be another type of lying.

There are ways to put your best foot forward. There are ways to address topics in the right order so that they are placed in the appropriate historical and doctrinal context. But if it’s clear someone understands the context of a question and they want a straight answer, then they deserve a straight answer.

But I suppose I can’t really expect the experienced practitioner of Doublethink to do that, now can I?

Is there a way out?

I want to end my discussion of polygamy on a constructive note. I’ve elaborated on my belief that polygamy is a problem because Joseph Smith engaged in sexually inappropriate activity and leveraged his position as a religious leader for personal benefit. (Perhaps at some point in the future I’ll also tackle it from a theological, LDS belief-based standpoint rather than the social angle.) My conclusion was that the LDS Church is in a massive bind when it comes to polygamy, and that its current approach to the issue is dishonest. A question I’d like to look at now is whether or not there is a way out.

There are three options for the LDS Church in dealing with polygamy:

1. Publicly disavow it and make the necessary changes to LDS scripture, teachings, and rituals to remove polygamy as a doctrine
2. Publicly accept it as a doctrine and cease attempts to whitewash the issue
3. Attempt to deflect attention from it, conceal it whenever possible, and make no attempt to deal with the issue

Option 3 is what they’ve been going with since the 1920′s, and this means the issue rears its ugly head every few years and causes a PR headache. It’s also the most dishonest approach and causes damage to the Church’s reputation and the well-being of its members. To demonstrate an example of how the LDS Church does this, I’m going to use a very simple and high-profile example. The LDS Church recently launched a makeover of mormon.org, which now includes member-submitted testimonials and introductory information about the religion. This is a fair source for me to analyse because:

• It’s public-facing and intended to be a point of first contact for people interested in Mormonism
• It reflects the most up-to-date policy on how to present information about Mormonism
• This official source represents what the LDS Church wants its members, investigators, and the general public to believe

Let’s have a look at the page that introduces Joseph Smith to outsiders. It’s a simplified version of Sunday School stories we’ve all heard plenty of times. The first few sections provide good background, and although the section “A Prophet of God” can be quibbled over due to cherry picking from the multiple accounts of the First Vision, it sticks more or less with the 1838 account, which has been considered the official version for quite some time.

The section “A Leader of Christ’s Church” glosses over the basics of church structure but slips in the one-sided, vague reference to “persecution” that early Mormons suffered. We could quibble some more here over the fact that much of the “persecution” was deliberately provoked by Mormons who barged in on neighbourhoods, disrupting the locals’ way of life, and were nasty to people who asked them to quit it. However, there were incidents where innocent Mormons who had not engaged in provocations were harmed, so I can let that pass as a statement with a pro-LDS slant rather than a total lie.

Until now, I can’t really take mormon.org to task for failure to include nuanced discussion of Danites, the Salt Sermon, and whether there were angels, one personage or two personages present at the First Vision. It’s an introductory document, and I can hardly blame them for condensing information and putting their best foot forward. But now we arrive at “A Devoted Husband and Father”. Here is the entirety of the text of that section, with my comments in boldface. I’ve marked lies (meaning factual errors and misrepresentations of fact) with numbers in superscript.

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“The heavy burden of leading the Church did not distract Joseph from his responsibility to his wife and children¹, it increased his love for them².”

It’s fair to say that Smith did love his family, but without a statement from Smith supporting this, implying that the mantle of leadership increased that love makes this misleading and falsely sentimental.

“One of the later Prophets of the Church told the members, ‘No success can compensate for failure in the home.’ The statement came more than a century after Joseph Smith died, but Joseph had exemplified the idea all his life.³“

All his life? He didn’t fail Emma when he was tried for vagrancy for a treasure hunting scam and had a “revelation” telling her to quit grumbling about his dodgy activities? When he and Emma had to live with the Whitmers, Newel K. Whitney and Isaac Morely because he couldn’t make enough money to pay the rent? When he took plural wives without the other wives’ consent? When his sexual relationship with Marinda Johnson riled up a mob that broke into his house to tar and feather him and left the door open, causing his adopted child to die of exposure?

The bar must be fairly low if engaging in socially unacceptable actions that causes a chain of events resulting in the death of a baby isn’t failure in the home. I would accept a statement that said Smith did the best he could, or that he never stopped loving his family amidst the chaos of his life, but to say he is the perfect example for family life is a lie. This is hero-worshipping propaganda.

“Even though Joseph was constantly persecuted⁴ and imprisoned on false charges,”⁵

Liberty Jail is the best example of the “false imprisonment” claims Mormons make. When Smith was arrested, it was after a series of escalations involving many Mormon provocations of native Missourians that came to be called The Mormon War. Mormons had caused a massive amount of trouble in Missouri, and vigilante action on both sides left the state government utterly fed up with the presence of violent religious extremists. As the official leader of the Mormons and their militia, Joseph Smith was responsible for the violence and provocations of his people. He could have been executed as a military combatant, but another general intervened and decided he should be tried as a civilian. He was held for four months without charges in Liberty Jail, which is improper legal procedure, but given Smith’s involvement with Sidney Rigdon and the Danites, not necessarily unjust. Considering the brutal winter’s effect on travel and the fact that Missouri was only semi-civilised at that time, it’s not shocking that he wasn’t brought to court right away. Had Smith been tried for his role in the 1838-39 conflicts, he would probably have been convicted of many charges such as destruction of property, conspiracy to commit murder, inciting others to commit murder and destroy property, disturbing the peace, and so on.

Let’s not forget that Smith was in Missouri in the first place because of his illegal activities with the Kirtland Safety Society. Fleeing money troubles or looking for a bailout wasn’t unusual for Smith; when he moved from Palmyra to Harmony, he was only able to avoid arrest for debt default because Martin Harris had bailed him out. When he was murdered in Carthage Jail, he was awaiting trial on 100% legitimate charges of destroying a printing press. Joseph Smith was often in legal trouble, but it was almost always a situation of his own making due to mismanaging assets given to him by others or by encouraging Mormons to be a nuisance in a new neighbourhood. There were occasions where action taken against him was illegal, such as when he was tarred and feathered and when he was shot to death. But these actions didn’t take place in a vacuum, and they were conducted by people who felt their property, way of life, or family honour was at stake and did not feel the law was doing enough to protect them. It takes considerable provocation to actually be chased down by an angry mob, and Smith provided plenty of provocation.

So this sentence is only halfway completed, but it’s already a blatant lie and will mislead newcomers to Mormonism into thinking that Joseph Smith was never guilty of the crimes for which he was legitimately arrested.

“his first thoughts were always for his family.”⁶

This is a bit of a generalisation, as his letters from Liberty Jail focused on many things beyond his family. I would move on and say that I had bigger fish to fry, but it seems by “family” mormon.org is only referring to Emma Smith and her offspring. What about the rest of his family? Do the plural wives not matter? Are they less important than Emma, or worse, are they inconvenient people who need to be deleted from the record? Do their lives, sacrifices, and contributions mean less than Emma’s? Even if Smith’s first thoughts were always for his family, his actions were generally for himself.

“He wrote to his wife, Emma, while he was imprisoned in Missouri, ‘Tell the children that I am alive and trust that I shall come and see them before long. Comfort their hearts all you can, and try to be comforted yourself all you can’ (‘’I Was with My Family’: Joseph Smith As Husband, Father, Son, and Brother’ Brent L. Top, Liahona, December 1992).”

I don’t doubt that Smith probably felt wretched whilst in jail and probably missed his family dearly. But the effect this had on the rest of his family is omitted. Joseph Smith also wrote some rather tender things to his plural wives. Presenting Emma as his only wife is lie by omission #2 about polygamy.

“Facing unjust punishment,⁷ he only thought of his family’s well-being.”⁸

This is just a repetition of the previous misleading statement about Joseph Smith’s criminal record.

“Joseph lived the doctrine he preached⁹ — that strengthening our families should be the focus of our lives because they are the only things we can take with us when we die.”

Smith wasn’t living the doctrine he preached, because he preached monogamy and practised polygamy. I don’t think Smith was really strengthening his family when he used deception to marry his one legal wife and then failed her so thoroughly. He threatened her with death in D&C 132, and completely failed to provide a stable home environment or steady income during their entire marriage. He was not strengthening his family when he failed to inform Emma about taking additional wives, and he was not strengthening his family when he had her publicly lie on his behalf in the wake of the John C. Bennett scandal. When Smith died, he left his wife a pregnant impoverished widow. By the standards of his own day, he was not a particularly competent husband and father, even without taking polygamy into consideration.

The only positive spin we can put on this claim is that although he did frequently abuse his privileges, it does seem that Smith may have genuinely believed that he was the key to getting into heaven, and that by sealing as many people as possible to him he was guaranteeing their salvation. The whitewashing in this statement steals the focus from the revolutionary doctrine of families that last forever.

“When his life was in jeopardy, Joseph relied¹⁰ on his faith in Christ not only to sustain himself, but his wife and children as well.”

And his wife . . . and his wife . . . and his wife . . . and his wife . . . and his — oh, sod it. This is lie by omission #3, as well as a misrepresentation of the reasons his life was in danger. It must be incredibly important to the LDS leadership that people believe their lies about polygamy, because they’ve repeated them several times in a very small and important document. Smith appropriated people’s wives, their daughters, their money, and their trust, and frequently mismanaged them. Angry mobs in frontier cultures have killed for far less.

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Goodness, that’s ten lies in 219 words. The next section, “A Martyr of the Restored Gospel” is equally problematic, but since I’m focusing on public, official LDS lies about polygamy I won’t use the same level of scrutiny. The worst part is this:

He did not die in public with the sympathy of the world, he was shot by a mob while he was locked in a jail on false charges.

This is splitting hairs, but he did die in public, propping himself up against the well outside the jail. It is correct to say that the world at large had no sympathy for him, and he was shot by a mob that probably believed he would escape the legal process — again — and took matters illegally into their own hands. But he was not in Carthage on false charges. Smith ordered the destruction of a printing press, which is a violation of the First Amendment. Telling prospective Mormons that Smith was innocent of any crime on the day he died means that when they repeat that lie, they will look like fools to their friends and families who know better. Lying to prospective members about this issue only strengthens the arguments of counter-cultists who say that the LDS Church brainwashes its members into believing whatever they say. There is one gem in the muck:

He was not a perfect person, not a deity.

If only the anonymous copywriting drone at the Church Office Building had kept that in mind when writing the rest of this rubbish. The Church is not obligated to put its dirty laundry on display, but if it claims to be God’s One True Church^TM, then it had better not use lies to draw people in.

So there we have it; strategy number three seems to be a massive failure in terms of its ability to be honest with prospective and current members, as well as the ammunition it provides to opponents of Mormonism. However, it’s mostly effective. Many members learn to Doublethink past the issue, or remain ignorant because of the strong unspoken taboos that exist around non faith-promoting speech. But what of the other two paths available?

There are two ways to come clean on polygamy: embrace it or reject it.

A total rejection of polygamy would require the following actions, all performed in public and all officially announced by the President of the Church. They’d have to strip section 132 from the Doctrine and Covenants, acknowledge that Joseph Smith was mistaken to ever introduce the practise in the first place, and acknowledge that while the Church still believed he restored the Gospel, he abused his privilege and for that God allowed him to be removed from his office. They’d need a rewrite of all language in the temple marriage ceremony and the Proclamation on the Family that alludes to men or God having multiple spouses and establish a policy that permits people to be sealed to only one spouse at a time. This would ripple out to negate other doctrines, such as the idea that women give birth to spirit babies in the afterlife. Sealing couples and families together would become a metaphorical rather than physical reality. Families would be together in the sense of all being in heaven at one never-ending barbeque, but the doctrine of men would going on to become creator-gods of their own worlds without end would probably be sidelined or discarded altogether, as the traditional doctrinal explanation for how those worlds are populated would disappear. Mormon heaven would start to look like Christian heaven, except 99% of the world’s population would be in the Telestial Kingdom and not in Hell.

Without the doctrine of polygamy and the way it affects Mormons’ understanding of the characteristics of God, man’s destiny to become a god, Mormonism would be a plain vanilla variety of Protestantism with their work of Bible fanfiction and horribly ugly knickers to add flavour.

The other option is for Mormons to embrace polygamy and their role as peculiar people. This may not necessarily mean a return to the doctrine, as it is still illegal in most countries where Mormons are found. A return to honesty could mean richer histories and discussions, as the lives of polygamous families would no longer be a taboo subject. Plural wives in the family tree would not be a cause for confusion or shame but would be accepted as just another part of the family. Modern Mormons who chose to could probably live the principle, as society is at a point where state-mandated heterosexual monogamy is no longer enforced. It would destroy decades of PR work done by the Church to convince the world that Mormons are mainstream and probably cause a lot of people to leave but it would mean acceptance of a doctrine that has always been part of Mormonism.

Positive upsides could include a reconciliation with the FLDS which might make that community less closed and vulnerable to their abusive leaders, a cease-fire on the gay community due to now being part of the alternative marriage crowd, and embracing Mormonism’s history with no apologies. (Except for the big apology about being so neurotic over it for the last century.)

Either approach would cause massive upheaval in the Church, so it won’t be addressed any time soon. Accepting or rejecting polygamy would cause social and doctrinal earthquakes, but if Mormons really want to “do what is right, let the consequence follow,” they’ll stop lying about it.

The Big Deal

CJ had a question meaty enough to prompt a whole new series of thoughts on my last post:

My ultimate question is, why does the literal truth of history seem to matter so much more to Mormons than to other Christians? Belief in Christianity, as a whole, doesn’t hinge (for most Christians, anyway) on, say, the literal truth about whether Noah built the Ark. Although obviously, for some, it does–but outside of Mormonism, we generally recognize them as, well, a fringe element. Within Mormonism, this absolutism seems to be mainstream. Why?

I think I’ve been able to pinpoint what the big deal is. Here’s how it works in mainstream Christianity:

Belief that Jesus died for humanity’s sins = Salvation

That’s it. There are a few minor details in some sects, such as requiring baptism, but most Christian faiths recognise the Christian baptisms of other sects as valid because really all that matters is faith in Jesus. There can be downsides such as people who are “saved” and also real arseholes, or the stupidly unfair idea that unbaptised babies and people who were never introduced to Christianity go to Hell. (Mormonism is a lot more fair by writing in a bonus round for people in this category.)

Mormonism is a little different:

Belief or non-belief in Christ = Basic Telestial Salvation. Payment (cash and labor) for premium access = Terrestrial or Celestial Salvation and/or Exaltation

It’s a bit more complicated, but one plus is that it’s a lot harder to qualify for Hell than in mainstream Christianity. Really hard, in fact. Mormons believe that the Atonement of Christ covers every human being who isn’t a Son of Perdition. That definition is roughly someone who has a full understanding of God’s plan through the priesthood. (That makes a pretty good case for the idea that there will be no women in Mormon Hell.) Every qualifying human being, from Hitler to Mother Theresa, will be resurrected and at least qualified for the Telestial Kingdom. Though I don’t believe in Mormonism any more, this does make sense to me. I cannot actually conceive of any person, not even a genocidal megalomaniac, whose actions deserve to be punished for all eternity. If people are immortal, there has to be a point where bygones are bygones. Humans are far too stupid to have the consequences for their actions as serious as forever.

So whereas in mainstream Christianity faith in Christ = the same salvation for all believers, in Mormonism the Atonement is akin to gaining admission to a nice dance club. Everyone gets inside and is guaranteed to have a very nice time. However, there are VIP lounges in this massive dance club on two higher levels for those with premium access memberships. There is only one place where you can purchase memberships, and you had to know about it before you got into the club. (If you missed your second chance at the Spirit Prison Information Booth on your way in, tough. You’ll have to enjoy the main dance floor.) Super Elite members flash their Calling and Election Made Sure card and get to go to the über VIP Lounge, where they are taught how to build their own dance clubs on real estate given to them by the club owner. Those in the VIP lounges can descend to party with those with Basic Salvation Access, but the bottom-dwellers can’t get past the bouncers at the stairs because they didn’t pay for a premium membership and don’t know the secret handshakes.

In mainstream Christianity, almost everything is background information — Noah’s Ark, the conquest of Canaan, the Ten Plagues, all of Paul’s epistles — all you have to know is that God loves humanity, Jesus died for humanity’s sins, and if you profess your belief in those things you get into Heaven. Mainstream Christianity is contingent on no fallible, mortal man. So if bits and pieces of the Bible aren’t literal history, it doesn’t matter.

Not so with Mormonism. Joseph Smith was the one who established the rituals necessary for Salvation Plus. He’s the originator and therefore the key. His credibility is vitally important to LDS Church claims regarding the Book of Mormon and temple rituals. If Joseph Smith wasn’t telling the truth, and the historical claims of Mormonism are false, this means lots of Mormons are paying 10% of their income and forty hours a week for access to a VIP lounge that doesn’t exist. They could have been having coffee and pastries after an easygoing one hour meeting per week at a nice Lutheran church and gotten precisely the same deal as every other Christian. If Joseph Smith is lying, then Mormons are wasting a lot of time and energy on what Christians would call the blasphemous notion that God would create something as elitist as VIP lounges in Heaven. Mormon heaven is a capitalist meritocracy. Christian heaven is a bit more socialist.

The doctrinal correctness of polygamy as established by Joseph Smith matters because he did all of the following:

• Told married men that God wanted him to sleep with their wives
• Had sex with those women
• Had sex with underage girls (in his day a 37 year old man with a 14 year old girl would have been just as shocking as it is today)
• Told women that God was going to kill him if they refused to become his polygamous wives, laying an unfair burden of responsibility on these women
• Hid his polygamous/extramarital relationships from his legal wife
• Had sexual relationships with girls he had taken into his home as hired help or wards
• Sold his friends out when they found out he’d been lying to them about polygamy

Joseph Smith did all of those things. If he wasn’t being commanded by God, then that makes him a pretty unreliable messenger in terms of a spiritual and religious guide. If he could lie and rape (statutory rape is rape), how can we believe what he said about the Book of Mormon? Someone who did these things today would not be respected as a religious leader; they would be in prison for bigamy and statutory rape. Think of Roman Polanski; an older, charismatic leader tells a young teen that if she grants him sexual favours she’ll be rewarded beyond her wildest expectations. Unless polygamy was ordered by God, Joseph Smith was no different than Polanski. Considering that polygamy was what landed him in Carthage Jail, it would seem that the citizens of Illinois in the 1840′s felt the same.

This is why Mormons spend more time publicly affirming that Joseph Smith was a true prophet and the Book of Mormon is true than they spend on showing gratitude to Jesus. That’s why, unlike Christians, they must defend the historical accuracy of their sacred books — all of them — and pay for access to exclusive information that gains them access to exclusive clubs. If Joseph Smith made it up, that’s quite a rip-off.

Polygamy, What Will We Do With You?

Warning: long post. However, if you carry on you’ll get to the part where I use the word “shagging”.

If the LDS Church is a house, polygamy is the creepy clown doll sitting on the top shelf of the spare room that you can’t discard because your granny gave it to you way back when. It’s also the trending topic in Outer Blogness this week thanks to the fact that it gets a prominent mention in this month’s copy of the Ensign. Filed under the heading “irrelevant issues,” Ballard encourages Mormons to avoid thinking about what used to be considered an absolute requirement for exaltation:

Why are we still talking about it? It was a practice. It ended. We moved on. If people ask you about polygamy, just acknowledge that it was once a practice but not now and that people shouldn’t confuse any polygamists with our church.

I suppose it takes a used car dealer to sell that hunk of junk. Mrs. Jack does a bang-on job of calling out Mormons who try to sweep their plural wives under the rug, but I’d like to address the more direct fallout this has on the membership. Ballard’s statement is incredibly misleading, and this approach to LDS history is exactly the cause of so many Mormons feeling anxiety, anger, and frustration when they find out history is more complex than the Church Office Building wants us to believe. Ballard was born in Salt Lake at a time when there were still living LDS polygamists, is a colleague with the polygamously sealed Dallin H. Oaks, and is an apostle of the LDS church. He should know better. Yet, he wrote an article about Joseph Smith’s family that makes no mention of any wife but Emma Smith, in keeping with the current policy of sanitising polygamy from LDS history. Either he’s a maestro of Doublethink or unforgivably dishonest.

Mormonism used to be much more clear, assertive, experimental, and creative with its doctrine. Since the formation of the Corporation of the Presiding Bishop a century ago, there has been no innovation in doctrine, merely a blanding down and consolidation of belief and ritual. The establishment of Correlation in the 1960′s was the first nail in the coffin of doctrinal innovation in Mormonism, and ongoing correlation efforts have tried to muddle and mix and sanitise what Mormonism used to be until what is left is a bland, globally palatable spiritual gruel. This process is not without difficulty when it comes to awkward historical artefacts such as polygamy. Consider:

1. 19th century Mormons called polygamy “the Capstone of Mormon Doctrine” and considered it as essential as temple ordinances to progress to godhood. Polygamists fled from authorities, went to prison, and gave up personal property because their religious convictions were so strong.
2. Modern Mormons dismiss polygamy as a “practise” and either believe it was only temporarily commanded as a test of faith or to “build up the kingdom”, or that it was a mistake and never should have been practised at all.
3. Either 19th century Mormons were wrong or modern Mormons are.
4. This leads to an uncomfortable conclusion that the modern church can’t be “true” because it was either wrong to establish polygamy as a point of doctrine or wrong to abandon it.
5. In response to this problem, a lot of Mormons rely on materials pumped out by the Ministry of Truth to help them Doublethink it away, and the rest hope it will all just go away.

The “ignore it and hope it goes away” stance, which the Church has been clinging to for the last several decades, is not paying off as a good long-term strategy. It makes Mormons angry, confused, and/or neurotic. I’ve seen four basic types of response to this issue, which will continue to fester until the Church makes an open, clear declaration on the subject:

1. Ignorance or Indifference

Thanks to the careful manipulation of history that takes place in Sunday school, many Mormons are ignorant of the fact that polygamy was ever practised by LDS people. Some are vaguely aware but don’t take interest in the subject. The danger is that ignorance can lead to Mormons saying misinformed things that reflect badly on the Church. I was told for years by LDS teachers and priesthood leaders that rumours of polygamy were just vicious lies made up by anti-Mormons, and felt quite the fool when I found out I’d been repeating their lies for years.

2. “Please Don’t Let it Be True”

Many Mormons, particularly women, find polygamy a source of great anxiety. (Men, because they don’t get quite the shortest end of the stick, tend to worry less about it.) Faithful Mormon feminists, who have enough cognitive dissonance to deal with, are usually stretched to the limit when considering polygamy, as reflected in The Exponent’s latest musings on polygamy. The author believes that polygamy will be disallowed in the next life, which is a bit of a slap in the face to many people, Mormon and not, who were polygamous or polyamourous for personal, cultural and religious reasons. More telling is this bit:

“I view polygamy in this life as the result of a fallen world”

This is a rather narcissistic creation of God agrees in the image of the author’s personal views of modern liberal egalitarian Western-style monogamy. (An utterly new and uncommon marital arrangement in history.) But I have compassion for this position as it was the one I held when I was desperately trying to force my beliefs in Mormonism to coexist with my hopes for equal treatment. It ended up not working because the deity of Mormonism, a male who sent his male offspring to redeem humanity and have his male worshippers oversee women everywhere, even in their own homes, didn’t seem likely to turn out to be someone “who appreciates and acknowledges the fundamental equality of human souls, who values men and women of various races and classes equally.”

3. Acceptance

Some Mormons realise what polygamy means in LDS doctrine, see that it has gone away for now, but believe that it did work in some way as part of God’s plan and yet has a part to play in the future. These types accept that LDS Apostle Dallin H. Oaks is sealed to two women, making him a polygamist. (The first wife happens to have died before #2 was added, but that’s irrelevant in the eternal scheme of things.) There are plenty of LDS who have studied and accept all of the following:

1. Early Mormons asserted polygamy as a civil right and an important point of doctrine.
2. There is a subtle difference between salvation and exaltation. Salvation means having your soul saved by Jesus. Exaltation means the process of becoming a deity, which requires temple ordinances, and as taught for the first 80 years of Mormonism, with three wives per man being the popularly held requirement for godhood.
3. When LDS authorities say we are the literal offspring of God, they understand that this refers to Brigham Young’s teaching that souls are created through “natural action,” which is why a god would need lots of baby factories exalted wives to help him populate his worlds without end with worshippers.
4. Sexual relations are an important part of the Mormon concept of godhood, so important that to be the Saviour, Jesus needed to be literally half god. LDS authorities have consistently taught that Elohim was married to Mary and shagged her in order to produce Jesus. Oh, and there are temple records listing Mary as God’s wife.
5. The Proclamation on the Family, the temple ceremony, and the temple marriage ceremony use very carefully chosen words that do not disallow polygamy by God or man. Women give themselves to men, who receive them. Our spirits are the offspring of God and one of his wives. There are currently practicing polygamists in the form of male divorcés and widowers who marry additional women in the temple.

I’ve found that Mormons who hold this view point tend to be pragmatic and sex-positive. Those with immature or squeamish views of sex and bodies don’t want to think about Heavenly Father shagging Mary but I don’t know how you can get around the word “literal” and the frequency of its use by General Authorities when speaking of the creation of human souls and the body of Jesus. Which is what brings me to the final category:

4. Denial. Sad, pathetic denial.

This is an old technique, one used by Emma Smith herself in a pitiable and understandable attempt to preserve her dignity from her philandering husband. These are people who cannot come to terms with the idea that they could ever share time with other spouses, or who refuse to accept that Joseph Smith might have abused his position to, er, get into other positions. The ever-witty Eliza Snitch quipped:

I revered and idolised Joseph Smith as a child, and how angry I was when I found out about the glass-looking, money-digging, womanising stuff. I felt like a dupe. It’s embarrassing. Analogy: it’s like if Hitler had been my favourite painter, and then one day somebody said, “Hey, ever heard of the Holocaust?” Obviously that would be a whole new level of ignorance, but you catch my gist.

She was addressing the oh-so-sad claims of the hilariously titled blog “Pure Mormonism” which was jumping on the obscure and easily dismissed conspiracy theory bandwagon that claims Joseph Smith was framed by Brigham Young and never practised polygamy. The theory is as laughable as the writing is dull, but feel free to look into the minds of these sad, self-deluded wankers if you’ve got a few minutes to kill this afternoon. I’ll also repeat my sentiments that polygamy denial is a horrible insult to the men, women and children who endured so much because they believed it was so important.

So let’s consider: why does polygamy still matter so much? Well, that’s the only easy part of the polygamy debate, and here it is:

Mormons believe they will have bodies and they will be shagging with them in the afterlife.

Polygamy, serial monogamy, polyamoury; it’s all the same if you don’t believe people will have bodies or shag after they are dead. To my knowledge, only Mormons and suicide bombers believe they will be able to have a little rumpy pumpy after they kick off. Mainstream Christians believe that heaven will be populated by our souls all dwelling together in the bliss of God that transcends sex, because procreation (and therefore the social institution of marriage) serves no purpose any longer. If grandpa remarried a lovely woman after grandma passed away, in traditional Christian Heaven he can be with all of his family and there’s nothing odd about it. But for Mormons it all gets a bit dodgy because you have to think about how many women grandpa will be bonking.

Some things modern LDS people need to get a grip on:

1. Polygamy is not a dirty word. Polygamous relationships are an important part of human history. There are polyandrous societies and cultures that eschew the idea of marriage altogether. Polygamy is not the same thing as child rape or inbreeding unless you are talking about cultural oddities like the FLDS.

2. The modern LDS ideal of one happy heterosexual lifelong true love government-recognised marriage per person is very much a product of the Victorian era in which Mormonism emerged. This viewpoint of marriage is utterly new in human history. It bears no resemblance to virtually every other cultural attitude toward marriage in history. Even European Christians saw marriage as a perfunctory civil contract until the industrial revolution enabled social mobility and class systems broke down. Yes, that’s right. Marrying for love destroyed society as we knew it. And yet we soldier on. (You can extrapolate this to modern times and see how the LDS crusade against gay marriage is a load of bollocks.)

The LDS Church’s current approach to its unwanted historical artefacts is dishonest. The doctrine of polygamy exists, has never been disavowed, and is still practised by unwitting temple attendees. Denial of its relevance and importance is a betrayal of the immense sacrifices, personal battles, and legal trouble that Mormons endured for almost a century. It treats Mormons’ grandmothers just as poorly as they were treated as second-class plural wives, unable to publicly claim their status and personal property. Treating polygamy as a practice and not a doctrine is a radical departure from what Mormonism originally was, and a student of Mormon doctrine could easily make the case that it constitutes apostasy, which is why the Fundamentalist LDS Church exists in the first place.

Only one thing has remained consistent about the LDS approach to polygamy: lying to protect it. Joseph Smith lied about it to his closest friends, setting off the chain of events that led to his murder. Church leaders lied about it to keep from getting arrested during Brigham Young’s reign. The Church claimed to renounce polygamy in 1890 but kept marrying people and lying about it. Now it’s bad for PR so leaders lie about it to make it go away. I doubt an honest, open approach will be forthcoming, but it certainly would be a breath of fresh air to so many who struggle to understand just why that creepy clown doll won’t stop staring at them.

Women don’t have the priesthood, you silly sods

The Exponent seems to produce the most comment-worthy articles on Mormon feminist topics. Today’s article on women and the priesthood provides an overview of various viewpoints on whether or not women have it or not, and the article wisely avoids taking a stance but, in Exponentish fashion, invites the readers to comment. My answer is an unequivocal no. I didn’t believe women had the priesthood when I was a rabid zealot, and I don’t believe it now that I’m a dirty apostate.

I always rolled my eyes at women who claimed to have some form of priesthood in a bizarre, esoteric, non-literal sense. Look, darlings, if only women showed up for church, what would you be able to do? Not much. You could pray and have a spiritual thought, perhaps. But you would not be able to call sacrament meeting to order, conduct ward business, bless and administer the sacrament, bless babies, ordain new priesthood holders, deliver official messages from Salt Lake, collect tithing, take attendance, or anything else that constitutes a real church meeting. The men don’t just hold priesthood keys — they have the physical keys to get in the building, so without the men you can’t even get into the building. I’ll believe that these women really think that they have the priesthood when they inform the Bishop that they will be performing their 8-year-old’s baptism.

The author quoted one of the more convoluted and problematic statements that you hear many pseudo-feminist Mormon women spout:

Some Mormons I know draw a distinction between priesthood power and priesthood authority. They say that both men and women in the church have priesthood power -– that access to the powers of heaven -– but that only men have priesthood authority -– the power to administrate in the Church and officiate in certain ordinances. They think of both women and men having priesthood, but just that women have not been given the offices of it, at least for the time being.

I’m assuming that since the author prefaced this with the caveat “some Mormons I know” that she isn’t claiming to hold this opinion. That’s good, because this opinion is held by silly sods. Priesthood = authority. That’s probably the least controversial way to sum it up. No authority equals no priesthood. “Prove it,” you say. All right, then, I will and to do so I’ll use a very Mormony object lesson.

Let’s compare the Priesthood to a car and ordination to having the keys to that car and getting your driver license. And this is no ordinary car. It’s a big shiny Aston Martin with a jet engine that can drive you straight to Paradise Beach. Both the Priesthood and a car require keys and special permission in order for you to operate it. You can’t get to Paradise Beach on foot because there’s loads of nasty chasms on the way there, and the only way across is to drive across bridges, each of which has a toll both manned by burly angels who will ask each occupant of the heaven-bound vehicle for a toll in the form of a secret handshake. Those on foot and those who don’t know the secret handshake get diverted along a scenic route to a slightly less fancy eternal vacation destination.

You’ve got to have a clearly identifiable man-penis in order to be allowed to have keys to a car and a license to drive it. Men who are naughty can sometimes have their license temporarily suspended, but it’s extremely rare and it’s even more rare for somebody to have their keys taken away for good. Women aren’t permitted to drive, along with kids, idiots, and trannies. However, these unfortunate souls are permitted to sit in the car, provided that there’s a man at the wheel and nobody attempts to question his interpretation of the road map. Eventually everybody gets to Paradise Beach where rock-hard abdominals and eternal sandcastle-making await us all, but if you’re a woman you got there as a passenger, not as a driver.

If the priesthood is a car, a woman is allowed to benefit from its usefulness but she isn’t allowed to drive it. If you claim being a passenger in somebody else’s car is the same thing as having the title, keys and a driver license than you’re either a misinformed twat or protecting yourself from the monsters of cognitive dissonance with a soothing blanket of self-delusion.

I’m confused.

Sunday School teachers are supposed to stick to the manual and not stray from the text . . .

. . . or not?