What is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? The Reverend Roger Fritts October 28, 2012 Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota Across the earth, 55,000 full-time missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are riding bikes, going door to door, talking about the Mormon religion, developing their skills as effective salespersons. These 19 year-olds receive no stipends. Their parents support them, sending them a meager five hundred dollars a month. This leads to a story I found on a Mormon web site. A Catholic priest went into a barbershop for a haircut. When he was finished, the barber refused to take payment saying, "You are a man of the cloth. This is a free service that I offer to you." The Priest thanked the barber and went on his way. The next morning the barber found seven fishes and seven loaves of bread on his doorstep in gratitude from the priest. The next week, a Jewish Rabbi went into the same shop for a cut. Again, the barber refused payment saying, "You are a man of God. This is a free service that I offer to you." The next morning the barber found a bag of bagels with some cream cheese on his doorstep as a gift from the Rabbi. The following week, two Latter-day Saints Missionaries went into the shop for haircuts. Again, the barber refused payment saying, "You work in the service of God. This is a free service that I offer to you." The next morning the barber arrived to find twelve Mormon Missionaries on his doorstep. The Missionaries first approached me in 1969, when I was a student at Arizona State University. I voluntarily attended an evening talk about the Mormon religion. About six of us were in the dorm room, including a friend who was African American. The missionaries projecting a film strip onto the dorm wall, and gave us a brief and interesting history. According to the missionaries, a tribe of Jews left Jerusalem about 600 years before the birth of Jesus. They traveled to the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, where they built a ship. Sailing east, they crossed the Indian and the Pacific oceans and landed somewhere in the Americas. These Jews became what we now call American Indians. The filmstrip and the missionaries moved onto the life of Jesus. They told us that after Jesus died, he came back to life to live with his disciples near Jerusalem for forty days. However, at the end of the forty days, Jesus did not go to heaven. The Mormon missionaries explained to us that Jesus visited the descendants of the Jewish people who now lived in the Americas, the American Indians. In America Jesus established a kingdom of peace and righteousness. After one hundred and seventy years, this kingdom deteriorated and wars erupted. Mormon, a general and a prophet wrote a book on gold plates describing this history. Mormon gave these gold plates to his son 1
Moroni. Moroni buried these plates on a hill near Manchester, New York. 1700 years later, in the 1820s, Moroni appeared as an angel and told Joseph Smith to recover the gold plates. Smith translated the ancient language on the plates, and published the translation as the Book of Mormon. The Angel Moroni then took the gold plates away, so that today all we have is Joseph Smith's book. In the dorm room in 1969, the missionaries explained to us how the church ordained all white Mormon males as Priests when they turned sixteen. Priests could prepare, bless, and pass the bread and water sacrament. Priests could perform baptisms, confirmations, ordinations, and marriages. Priests could conduct funerals, hear confessions, and anoint the sick. Women and black males could not become priests. My African American friend asked why. The missionaries explained that after Cain committed the sin of killing his brother Able, God put a curse on Cain that turn Cain's skin from white to black. God has preserved this curse through time in the black skin of Negro people. Therefore, they explained, Negroes may become members of the Mormon Church, but the curse of Cain barred Negro men from the Mormon priesthood. "You are all nuts," said my friend. I found the first part of this presentation about the Native Americans being descendants of an ancient tribe from Israel, and that after he was crucified Jesus had come here and preached to the American Indians a fantastic, unbelievable story. However, it is no more fantastic then some stories told and believed by some Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus and advocates of other religions. In general such stories are harmless. On the other hand, I found the "Curse of Cain" story scary and dangerous. I told the missionaries this, and I encouraged them to look at Unitarian Universalism. They had never heard of us. No one changed anyone's mind in that dorm room debate. Still, as a student of religions, I remain interested in the Mormons. In my studies I discovered that in a small farming village in Vermont, in December of 1797, Joseph Smith Senior and two of his brothers, along with fourteen others, formed a Universalist Society. Universalism rejected the Calvinist doctrine of predetermination. Universalists believed in universal salvation, the belief that all of us go to heaven when we die. Two hundred years ago this positive view of God was spreading across New England among farmers and other working class people. The Smith family was part of this Universalist religious movement. Later when Joseph Smith Jr. founded the Mormon Church, his father's early Universalism was reflected in the theology. Today in their own version of universal salvation, Mormons have developed the largest genealogical research facility in the world, the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mormons conduct proxy baptizing in their temples of everyone who has ever lived, because only Mormon baptisms are valid in eternity. If your dead ancestor is baptized in a Mormon Temple ceremony, God lets them enter Heaven. Indeed, according to their records, some Mormon, worried about me, has performed a proxy baptism of Roger Fritts so that I can get into heaven. I suspect this belief is a modified version of the Smith family's Universalist 2
beliefs. Joseph Smith, Jr. was born in 1805. Smith claimed that when he was 17 years old and living in New York State, angel Moroni visited him. The angel revealed the location of a buried book of golden plates and a set of spectacles with magic lenses. In September 1827, Smith retrieved the plates. He claimed the angel commanded him not to show the plates to anyone else, but using the magic spectacles translate and to publish the result. Joseph Smith completed the translation in 1829, when he was twenty-four years old and the angel Moroni took back the plates. Smith published the Book of Mormon, in 1830. Today a few Mormon researchers argue we should treat the story and the Book of Mormon as a founding myth that is not literally true. Grant Palmer, himself a Mormon, writes that Smith pieced together The Book of Mormon from sources available to Smith. One example of a source is a book called The Golden Pot published in English in 1827 and written by Ernst Hoffmann. The fictional story by E.T.A. Hoffmann and Smith's account of the angel visits are very similar. Grant Palmer also points out that DNA evidence proves that Native Americans are not descendants of Jews. So Mormon historian Grant Palmer argues that Mormons should tell their children that the Book of Mormon is a wonderful, imaginative story, but that it is not factually true. In response to such views, in 1985, the President of the church established a secret "Strengthening Church Members Committee" to keep files on church members. If a Mormon strays from orthodoxy, the church can disfellowship them. The church disfellowshipped Grant Palmer in 2004. He can still attend services, but he is no longer a priest. Someday The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may evolve to tell these stories without insisting that they are true. Meanwhile, the church continues to attract followers, not, I think, because of the stories of Joseph Smith, but because of the community the church offers. Mormonism offers people an escape from loneliness. It provides strong support for a healthy way of life, at least for heterosexual families. Joseph Smith's original plan was for a community where all the Mormons pooled their property to eliminate poverty. Each person was to deed all he owned to the bishop, who would give back an amount suitable to the circumstances of the person, thereby equalizing wealth among the membership. This sharing of all wealth never worked. Instead, today, members are encouraged to contribute 10 percent of their income to the church. In addition, church leaders collect offerings to help members who need money for rent or gasoline. And any Mormon in need can approach the bishop of his or her congregation and receive an order of goods from a church storehouse. Running the local churches, called "wards," is the responsibility of volunteers. A bishop, always a man elected from the priests, heads the ward. In 1978, the church lifted the ban on priesthood for men with dark skin and Church leaders abandoned the "Curse of Cain" story. However, the male leaders still exclude women from the priesthood. The men tell Mormon women that the 3
priesthood is God's consolation prize to men, making up for men's inability to bear children. A Mormon Bishop who runs a ward receives no pay and has no paid assistants. The rules of the church dictate that the Bishop leads the church while continuing his regular employment. Most wards are composed of four or five hundred people and require about two hundred of these members to staff the organization. This volunteer approach even extends to death. When Mormons die, their family members and friends dress their bodies for burial. The heterosexual family is central to the Mormon religion, and this can be a wonderful support for heterosexual couples with children. LDS presidents created the "Family Home Evening." Monday night is the time when local churches do not hold other church related meetings or activities so families can be together. Families are encouraged to spend that evening together in wholesome activities. Families rotate the responsibilities of planning the evening among the family members. Big extended family potlucks are a central part of Mormon family life. Mormons tell a joke about a kindergarten teacher who gave her class a "show and tell" assignment of bringing something to represent their religion. The first boy got in front of the class and said, "My name is Benjamin. I am Jewish and this is the Star of David." The second boy got in front of the class and said, "My name is Thomas. I am Catholic and this is the Crucifix." The third boy got in front of the class and said, "My name is Johnny. I am Mormon and this is a casserole." Of course, this strong focus on the heterosexual family isolates single Mormons, especially females. Women are told they cannot get into the Celestial Kingdom when they die, the highest level of Mormon heaven, unless they are married. Because Mormon women outnumber Mormon men, some Mormon women agree to polygamy, so that all women may enter the highest level of Heaven. Gay Mormons, of course, are even more isolated. The church leadership insists that gay Mormons remain chaste and celibate. The Mormons encourage physically healthy heterosexual families by prohibiting smoking, gambling, alcohol, caffeine and sex outside of marriage. I know that some Mormons violate these taboos. Utah has no state lottery, while Arizona does. Many people with Utah plates drive to my cousin Bill's gas station in Beaver Dam, Arizona where they buy Mega Millions and Powerball tickets. Still, many Mormons do support each other in following these prohibitions and as a result, they live healthier lives.. By agreeing with all these rules, a shared belief establishes trust and a sense of mutual responsibility. Mormons pride themselves on feeling at home with other church members anywhere in the world. Lost in a foreign land, Mormons expect assistance from any Mormon they happened to meet. Today Mormons hunger for acceptance by the larger American society. Their excellent music, through the Mormon tabernacle choir, their excellent genealogy resources, which they share with 4
anyone who seeks them out, their involvement in the Boy Scouts, their service in the American military, all this helps them fit into American life. Personally, I admire their opposition to tobacco and to gambling, and I like their support of families, although I wish they would expand their definition of a family. I also admire the liberal Mormons who are working to make their religion more accepting and loving. In 1978, progressive Mormons changed the church's teaching about men of color. The Web site called Ask Mormon Girl http://askmormongirl.wordpress.com/ and the web site called Signaturebooks http://signaturebooks.com/ are examples of liberal, progressive Mormons. I hope someday these enlightened Mormons will prevail in their efforts to influence the LDS leadership. Still while Mormons hunger for acceptance by the larger American society, in many ways they remain separate. They have a strange story about Jesus. They wear special underwear. They store a year's worth of food in their homes. Teaching that the responsibility for each person's well-being rests first upon him or herself, each Mormon has a backpack equipped with seventy-two hours worth of the necessities of life. This is in preparation to survive the end of times, times of wars and natural disasters. In the 1970s and 1980s they used their strong political organization to help block the women's equal rights amendment. In California in 2008, Mormons played a major role in passing a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Today, some Mormon parents are still cut off from their own children, if their children say they are gay. Frankly I am uncomfortable around Mormons because of their sexism and homophobia. Still, we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Perhaps next month, or next year, my doorbell will ring. Two young people on bikes, dressed in suits and ties will offer to tell me about eternal salvation. Before they reach my door, they have had many doors slammed in their face. So I will take a deep breath. I will remind myself that I affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. I will try to be kind and polite. It will do me no harm to listen. And, if given a chance, I will tell them about Unitarian Universalism. The Mormon missionaries need to know who we are, because I never know. I could be talking to a future candidate for President of the United States. 5