Green Oasis

[I have the distinct feeling that I've said this all before. If that's true, just chalk it up to early onset senility and take it as a reminder.]

Some may question why I criticize the heartfelt beliefs of others, even those who are closer to me than anyone else in the world. I do it because I am mindful of my legacy.

I often hear stories about people whose parents or grandparents were Mormon but who left activity in the church. These people learn about Mormonism, join the LDS church, and are left wondering why their parents or grandparents left such a wonderful institution. I hear other stories about children who grow up without religion but find it later in life.

In short, my reason for criticizing religion is that I don’t want that to happen to my descendants. If they choose to follow religion, I want them to know exactly why I chose not to do likewise. I want them to hear my reasons and thoughts on the subject. I don’t want them to stumble blindly into faith. If they believe in God, I want them to understand exactly what my thoughts were on the subject. If they come to a belief that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, then I want them to also know that he married dozens of women, some polyandrously while their husbands were away on missions that he had called them to, some as young as fourteen, for example. I want their faith to be tempered by all of the evidence available and by asking tough, critical questions. I don’t want them to come to their beliefs through indoctrination, and I don’t want my lack of faith to be an enigma.

I think I know a lot about the ignored history of the LDS church, but something new always comes along to prove my ignorance.

The summary provided at the beginning of Doctrine and Covenants 132 says “Although the revelation was recorded in 1843, it is evident from the historical records that the doctrines and principles involved in this revelation had been known by the Prophet since 1831.” This revelation is a commandment to practice polygamy although modern LDS interpretation no longer recognizes the “New and Everlasting Covenant” as referring to polygamy. I was always mildly curious about what documents this referred to and why the LDS church avoided going into greater detail. Now I know.

I recently learned that Joseph Smith received a revelation in 1831 advising Elders of the church that they would marry Lamanite and Nephite (i.e. American Indian) women. The reason the Lord laid this plan was so that the Indian race would become white again. For those who don’t know, Mormons historically taught that the American Indians—who had once been white-skinned—had been cursed by God for their ancestors’ wickedness. Their darker skins were a sign of this curse. Intermarriage with white men was apparently God’s way of lifting his curse on the Lamanites. As W. W. Phelps recorded Joseph Smith’s revelation from memory (as late as 1861):

For it is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white, delightsome and Just, for even now their females are more virtuous than the gentiles.

It is thought that this revelation foreshadowed polygamy because many of those present when Joseph Smith received the revelation were already married. When W. W. Phelps asked how already married men could marry Lamanite women, he reports that Joseph said:

In the same manner that Abraham took Hagar and Keturah; and Jacob took Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah; by revelation—the saints of the Lord are always directed by revelation.

The manuscript was suppressed for years by the LDS church who held it in their vaults away from the eyes of historians.

I guess it goes to show that a) Joseph Smith obviously wasn’t racist since he was an early advocate of racial intermarriage (and sometime sufferer of jungle fever) and b) there’s always new stuff to learn about those crazy early Mormons.

[The following is an email message to the Curriculum Development department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in response to their request for comments and suggestions on the new Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith manual.]

Greetings,

I am grateful for this opportunity to offer my feedback on the
Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith. I hope that
what I say will be helpful to you.

It seems, from what I’ve read, that this manual follows a pattern
established in the other lesson manuals. The manual portrays Joseph
Smith as monogamous, mentioning only his marriage to Emma Hale. This
one example represents in my mind a general pattern in materials
published by the church: presenting only a selection of the available
historical facts. I imagine that this is to avoid presenting
information that will damage the fragile faith of new members and
those who waver, those who “cannot bear meat now, but milk they must
receive” (D&C 19:22). I had once accepted this rationale with the
expectation that the meat of LDS history was available in official
church materials to those who sought it.

Having graduated from the church’s seminary and institute programs, I
believed that I knew the important facts of LDS history because I had
exhausted official church materials. All the same, I felt that I
should be more familiar with the details of church history, so I set
out to study church history with greater focus. Little by little, I
began to realize that certain materials from the church’s history that
could be seen as unflattering or doctrinally unorthodox were missing
from all official publications. I felt disappointed and a little
ashamed to learn that I was unaware of these facts because I needed to
trust that the church was providing me with all important information.
I also wanted to believe that my faith was founded on good
information. This feeling of disillusionment led ultimately to my
choice to renounce my faith.

I wonder if the leading councils of the church have hoped that the
general membership could avoid coming across bits of troublesome
history. I believe that the increased worldwide attention on the
church and wider availability of information on the internet makes any
such hope unfounded.

I have always valued the pursuit of and loyalty to the truth. I
treasure this as a legacy of my Mormon pioneer forebears. I want my
family who choose to actively participate in the church to have all
the truth. I worry that if I try to present the historical truth to
them that they will either perceive it as an attack or believe that I
am lying because their church tells a different story. I hope instead
that they can come to rely on their church to provide that history
openly and honestly, even when it isn’t flattering to the church’s
public image or doesn’t support its current doctrinal stance. I hope
the church can find a way to openly address the uncomfortable parts of
its past.

I ask that you consider making more of the troublesome historical
facts available through official church publications. Perhaps you feel
that the Melchizedek Priesthood/Relief Society manuals are not the
appropriate place to present troublesome history, but please find a
place somewhere in your curriculum. If you are already considering or
implementing this, please consider this message a voice of
encouragement.

Thank you for asking for comments and for taking the time to read my
message.

Is it just me, or does “Follow the living prophet” contradict “I teach them correct principles and they govern themselves”? On the one hand we are exhorted to follow whatever the current prophet says. On the other, we are supposed to be given correct principles and then left to govern ourselves. So which is it: prophet or principles?

Some may say that the living prophet is the source of correct principles, but surely a correct principle won’t change with the changing of church administrations. If prophet A teaches X as the word of God and prophet B preaches the opposite of X similarly, then one of them isn’t teaching a correct principle. Or they make God changeable. Either way, they are not a source of principles as I understand the word.

For example, Brigham Young sounds uncompromising when he says “The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy” (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 11, page 269). When we remember that the New and Everlasting Covenant of Marriage was historically understood to refer to polygamous marriage (hence the need to keep this section secret for years), it is evident that Doctrine and Covenants 132 supports Brigham Young’s view.

Gordon B. Hinckley sounds equally uncompromising when he says “I condemn [polygamy], yes, as a practice, because I think it is not doctrinal.” (Larry King Live, aired 8 September 1998) Hinckley receives support from Official Declaration 1, only if we accept the idea that a current prophet can flatly contradict what a previous prophet taught as an eternal principle.

Some may claim that this apparent contradiction reflects a deeper principle, the principle of Jacob 2 where polygamy is righteous when God commands it. If that is the principle, then Brigham Young and Gordon Hinckley have both proven themselves unreliable in providing the correct principle by which the people can govern themselves. Given their public statements, their hearers would be unable to govern themselves. The audience is beholden to the prophets for constant guidance. Nothing that a prophet states as the truth can be relied upon to remain in force, even if the prophet states that it is an eternal principle:

The same God that has thus far dictated me and directed me and strengthened me in this work, gave me this revelation and commandment on celestial and plural marriage, and the same God commanded me to obey it. He said to me that unless I accepted it, and introduced it, and practiced it, I, together with my people would be damned and cut off from this time henceforth. We have got to observe it. It is an eternal principle and was given by way of commandment and not by way of instruction. (Joseph Smith, Contributor, Vol. 5, p. 259, emphasis added)

Contrast this train wreck of conflicting doctrine with the conservation of energy: energy can not be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another. This principle applies everywhere and for all time. We can rely on it to be true. When compared to the shifting sands of Mormon prophetic writ, this physical principle seems like an oasis in the desert.

The only principle that the Mormon church seems to preach is complete obedience to the titular head of its hierarchy. They are not, as Brother Joseph poetically put, taught correct principles and allowed to govern themselves. I wish they were.

Does this scenario seem familiar?

Half a century ago, a young social psychologist named Leon Festinger and two associates infiltrated a group of people who believed the world would end on December 21. They wanted to know what would happen to the group when (they hoped!) the prophecy failed. The group’s leader, whom the researchers called Marian Keech, promised that the faithful would be picked up by a flying saucer and elevated to safety at midnight on December 20. Many of her followers quit their jobs, gave away their homes, and dispersed their savings, waiting for the end. Who needs money in outer space? Others waited in fear or resignation in their homes. (Mrs. Keech’s own husband, a nonbeliever, went to bed early and slept soundly through the night as his wife and her followers prayed in the living room.) Festinger made his own prediction: The believers who had not made a strong commitment to the prophecy—who awaited the end of the world by themselves at home, hoping they weren’t going to die at midnight—would quietly lose their faith in Mrs. Keech. But those who had given away their possessions and were waiting with the others for the spaceship would increase their belief in her mystical abilities. In fact, they would now do everything they could to get others to join them.

At midnight, with no sign of a spaceship in the yard, the group felt a little nervous. By 2 a.m., they were getting seriously worried. At 4:45 a.m., Mrs. Keech had a new vision: The world had been spared, she said, because of the impressive faith of her little band. “And mighty is the word of God,” she told her followers, “and by his word have ye been saved—for from the mouth of death have ye been delivered and at no time has there been such a force loosed upon the Earth. Not since the beginning of time upon this Earth has there been such a force of Good and light as now floods this room.”

The group’s mood shifted from despair to exhilaration. Many of the group’s members, who had not felt the need to proselytize before December 21, began calling the press to report the miracle, and soon they were out on the streets, buttonholing passersby, trying to convert them. Mrs. Keech’s prediction had failed, but not Leon Festinger’s.

(Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), via The Situationist)

Quite a few prophecies have failed, yet people still believe. We’ve expected Jesus to come again for two thousand years, for example. It seems like people have been saying “any day now” forever, at least since the day he died.

Why don’t we collectively say “You know what, we were wrong. Christ really isn’t coming.”? Even if Christ really is coming (the big tease), disbelief would be a reasonable reaction after two millennia of disappointment. Why does the biggest failed (so far?) prophecy in history fail to cause widespread disbelief?

One reason is cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort we feel when there are two conflicting beliefs fighting it out in our minds. For example, if I believe myself to be an honest person, but I cheat on my taxes, this conflicting information will cause cognitive dissonance. I will probably do one of two things: I could either stop cheating on my taxes, or I could rationalize my dishonesty, perhaps by saying that I worked hard for my money and I deserve it.

The engine that drives self-justification, the energy that produces the need to justify our actions and decisions — especially the wrong ones — is an unpleasant feeling that Festinger called “cognitive dissonance.” Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs whenever a person holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent, such as “Smoking is a dumb thing to do because it could kill me” and “I smoke two packs a day.” Dissonance produces mental discomfort, ranging from minor pangs to deep anguish; people don’t rest easy until they find a way to reduce it. In this example, the most direct way for a smoker to reduce dissonance is by quitting. But if she has tried to quit and failed, now she must reduce dissonance by convincing herself that smoking isn’t really so harmful, or that smoking is worth the risk because it helps her relax or prevents her from gaining weight (and after all, obesity is a health risk, too), and so on. Most smokers manage to reduce dissonance in many such ingenious, if self-deluding, ways. (Ibid.)

In the case of the Second Coming, we don’t want to believe that we could be duped. “I’m not the kind of person who could fall for silly stuff like horoscopes, crystals, doomsday cults, and the like. But Christianity is different. Christianity is real. If it weren’t, I would see right through it because I’m not easily fooled.”

Personally, I have spent a lot of time in my life telling people that I knew that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God, that Jesus loves us, and God has a plan for our lives. I spent two years doing this full time. I spent countless hours saying this and hearing it repeated in church services. Much of my life has been spent inside the walls of a church. I estimate that I’ve spent at least one full year of my life in church meetings. The church received 10% of my earnings before taxes, my whole life, every last penny. After committing so much time and energy to my beliefs, it was uncomfortable to think that I’d sacrificed all that for a lie.

I’m no fool, or so I like to tell myself. If my beliefs were false, then I’d have realized it a long time ago. False prophecies? You’re reading them wrong. Polygamy? It was God’s will. Racism? Talk to God ’cause I didn’t make the rules. Christianity borrowed from previous mythologies? No, the mythologies borrowed from Christianity. Contradictions in Holy Scripture? Errors in translation. Unanswered prayers? Maybe the answer was “No” or “Wait”, or maybe you weren’t faithful enough for God to speak to you.

I rationalized from morning till night. Evidence against my beliefs surrounded me. I constantly battled to preserve my self image as an intelligent, independent thinker. The truth was that I spent my intelligence in rationalization and followed like a sheep because I was too proud to admit that I didn’t see the Emperor’s clothes. I was the very thing I pretended not to be. I held on to my beliefs kicking and screaming until I was forced to see their absurdity.