Overwhelmed by Indifference

For whatever reason, Elvis Costello seems to reflect my mood these days. I’m not sure what that means, but some of his lyrics again captured my mood:

Some of my friends sit around every evening
and they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference
and the promise of an early bed.

I have been thinking a great deal about  how some people really believe we are in the end times, in a battle for human souls, and that at some point Armageddon will come and the end of the world. One of my readers posted in response to my essay on Dallin Oaks’s recent speech:

The warning is, put on your seat belts, we’ve got some major turbulence ahead, the same kind of moral/spiritual turbulence you can read about ad nauseum in the Book of Mormon. For the real issue here is not gays but the basic question of whether we’re a secular or a god-fearing society. The balance is fast shifting toward secular, which will bring us the same civil war, outside invaders, secret combinations, and natural disasters that the Nephites faced when they turned from God in this promised land. Only with today’s technologies, this time it won’t take 1,000 years to fully play out…

Similarly, someone I know from the MAD board routinely speaks of critics and unbelievers in terms of ravening wolves who are trying to destroy God’s true church. He says that some of us are unwitting tools of Satan, but we’ll drink of the wrath of God soon enough.

Obviously, this kind of melodramatic warrior imagery isn’t unique to Mormonism. Even the most benign Methodists sing “Onward, Christian soldiers! Marching as to war!” But on the other end of the spectrum are the violent jihadists who sing “You have the atomic bomb, but we have suicide bombers.”

Belonging to a religious group makes one feel part of something bigger and grander than a single life. It feels wonderful to be an instrument in the hands of God toward some larger cosmic purpose. Naturally, those outside the group are to be considered the Other, either to be pitied for not having “the truth” or disdained for “kicking against the pricks” and criticizing the movement. Mormons, for example, often speak of how they feel sorry for people outside the faith, who would be so much happier if they had the gospel in their lives. At the same time, they express bewilderment and often contempt for those who consciously decide to reject Mormonism. Such people, they say, are spiritually dead or hard-hearted. 

A similar, though far more extreme, dynamic is on display in David Rohde’s excellent account of his seven months of captivity at the hands of the Taliban.

My captors saw me — and seemingly all Westerners — as morally corrupt and fixated on pursuing the pleasures of this world. Americans invaded Afghanistan to enrich themselves, they argued, not to help Afghans. …

Pressing me to convert, one commander ordered me to read a passage of the Koran each day and discuss it with him at night. He dismissed my arguments that a forced conversion was not legitimate. He and the guards politely said they felt sorry for me. If I failed to convert, they said, I would suffer excruciating pain in the fires of hell.

At one point, a visiting fighter demanded to know why I would not obey. He said that if it were up to him, he would take me outside and offer me a final chance to convert. If I refused, he would shoot me.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but I am not equating Mormons with the Taliban (though it is interesting that some ex-Mormons have been compared to Afghan terrorists, such as Tal Bachman, whom many apologists refer to as “Tali-Bachman”).

Rather, it’s the commonality of attitudes that I find interesting, and as I said, this attitude permeates pretty much every religious group: we alone have truth and are happy and fulfilling God’s plan.

Thus it’s natural for some people to see things in the stark terms of a war for the souls of humanity. They need to see every criticism of their beliefs as Satanic attacks on the truth. It’s much easier to dismiss a hateful attack than a legitimate criticism, but if you start from the premise that there are no legitimate criticisms, then you can dismiss every non-positive observation about your religion as anti-whatever you are.

Such an attitude would explain why some people are so offended by what they term “smooth-talking critics” who really just feign “niceness” as a tactic for spreading their hateful and evil message.

But in the end, the battle is being fought only in the mind of the believer. Many of us Mormons were taught from an early age that everyone outside the LDS church was watching us closely to see if we lived up to our faith. But it was shocking to me after I left to learn that no one was paying attention; no one cared what we did. Sure, they might think we were a little odd, but that’s about it.

And the church at large, although many of its members believe it is under constant attack from the media and others, rarely appears in the public consciousness. Mormonism surfaces as an issue only when the church or its members put themselves there, such as when Mitt Romney ran for president and the LDS church went all out to pass Proposition 8 in California.

No one cares about this alleged battle. I for one am overwhelmed by indifference. I don’t care enough about the LDS church or any other religion to attack it. I don’t care if I’m pitied or reviled for opting out of Mormonism. It just doesn’t matter much in the eternal scheme of things.

Of course, that’s just part of Satan’s plan, I suppose. He just has to convince us that nothing important is at stake, and he’s won the battle.  At least he has with me.

Accountability and Persecution

The other day I heard something from a church leader (I think I walked in on a conference talk my wife was watching on BYU-TV), and the speaker was saying something about accountability and how important personal and priesthood accountability is in the church.

I thought about that for quite a while. Many may be familiar with Boyd Packer’s famous talk about the three threats to the modern church: gays, feminists, and “so-called intellectuals.” In that talk, he spoke of the need to “face the same direction.” As a Church Education administrator, he was challenged by Harold B. Lee to always face downward, meaning that he was to represent the leadership’s position to the CES staff, and not the other way around. He said that applied to the church as a whole, suggesting that to turn and champion the interests of the lay membership to the leadership was tantamount to challenging their authority. Clearly, the three aforementioned groups had turned the wrong way. “There is the need now to be united with everyone facing the same way. Then the sunlight of truth, coming over our shoulders, will mark the path ahead. If we perchance turn the wrong way, we will shade our eyes from that light and we will fail in our ministries.”

What this suggests to me is that the church leadership, confident in its belief that it represents the will of God, believes that no church member has the right to turn the wrong way and suggest any changes or point out any problems. Such people are labeled “ark steadiers,” after the man who was killed trying to prevent the ark of the covenant from touching the ground; he was killed not because of his good intentions but because he did not have the right or authority to touch the ark. Likewise, the logic goes, lay members do not have the right or authority to correct or even imply correcting the leadership. Apostle Dallin Oaks has said, “It is wrong to criticize leaders of the Church, even if the criticism is true.”

We’ve seen examples of ark steadiers disciplined and ejected from the church. One such person is Lavina Fielding Anderson, a former Ensign (that’s the church’s official magazine) writer who founded the Mormon Alliance, a group dedicated to preventing “ecclesiastical abuse.” The reason such a group is needed at all is that, because everyone is supposed to be facing the same way, there is no mechanism of redress in the church. There is no official channel to make church leaders aware of members’ needs and problems, and apparently the church prefers it that way. Not long ago, the First Presidency issued a statement to its members asking that questions and problems be addressed to the local leadership and not to the General Authorities. Hence, the leadership becomes insulated from the membership at large, and the local leaders, most of whom have no formal leadership or counseling training, are left to deal with the problems of their ward and branch members. It’s not surprising that there is great potential for ecclesiastical abuse.

Of course, Ms. Anderson was ultimately excommunicated for publicizing leadership problems (many of which are quite serious) because her actions were seen as a public and deliberate challenge to the leadership. She was facing the wrong way.

The message from the Brethren could not be clearer: accept the counsel and instruction of leaders without question, and certainly never publicly question. We have all seen this attitude in the church, from the almost fetishistic devotion to following lesson manuals “with exactness” to the unquestioning acceptance of arbitrary rules, such as the “Kimballization” of BYU in the 1950s to the current belief that the number of earrings one wears is a direct indication of one’s faith in the prophet.

Yet the leadership is accountable only to God, assuming of course that God really is directing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. History is full of men and women who claimed to speak for God, and their complete lack of accountability has led to predictable results. It’s no surprise that most powerful religious leaders end up indulging in sexual excesses; after all, if the prophet did it, it must be right.

I’d been mulling over these thoughts over the weekend, and then yesterday a friend called me to express his outrage over Dallin Oaks’s remarks comparing the backlash against Mormons after Proposition 8 to the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. I don’t really need to comment on the disconnect between a Mormon claiming persecution on the level of a group that not only suffered much more as a people but whose very movement was openly disdained by LDS leaders. It’s almost too ludicrous to be outrageous.

But then it was said by an apostle, so it can’t be ludicrous. If he said it was so, it was so. My friend bet me that if Oaks’s comments become widely publicized, the church will issue an apology or at least a public retraction. I’ll take that bet. My guess is that they won’t, for two reasons. First is this notion of the leaders speaking for God; to admit that Oaks’s analogy, which he termed “a good one,” was offensive and ludicrous opens the door for questioning of the leadership. Second, Oaks’s remarks reflect the extent that a persecution narrative informs the lives of church members.

From its earliest days in upstate New York, the LDS church has been opposed and attacked, often violently, by its non-Mormon neighbors. From tarring and feathering to Haun’s Mill to the Joseph Smith’s martyrdom and Johnston’s army, the common thread is persecution, and to this day, this persecution is part of what defines people as Mormons. So, for Oaks and many other Mormons, the backlash from Proposition 8 was merely a continuation of that very persecution and is a natural outcome of the church’s standing for truth and right.

But the reaction Oaks cited really doesn’t compare to persecutions, and certainly not the kind of discrimination inflicted upon African Americans for centuries. Back when Proposition 8 was defeated, I told a Mormon friend that the vandalism and the protests would be short-lived, as they were a product of genuine hurt and anger. And my prediction has been right, I have to say. Yes, the church suffered a huge PR setback, but as far as I’ve seen, there has been no sustained persecution. But that really doesn’t matter. Oaks has publicly and officially done what the lay members had done long before in incorporating Proposition 8 into the persecution narrative of the church.

And who is to say he’s wrong? After all, no one wants to face the wrong way.

Utah Students to Hear President’s Message

In a surprise move, the Utah State Office of Education has announced that after reviewing the controversy surrounding President Barack Obama’s upcoming live address to the nation’s students, state leaders have arranged for a more acceptable alternative speaker: LDS Church President Thomas S. Monson.

“Over the last few days, we’ve received hundreds of calls and emails from parents worried that their children would be subjected to political propaganda from President Obama,” said Utah Superintendent of Public Instruction, L. Garth Groesbeck. “We didn’t want anyone to feel excluded or pressured, so we looked for someone who could serve as a positive role model for all students, regardless of political stripe.”

Groesbeck said that Monson was a “natural choice” to inspire the students. “Here is a man who has throughout his life reached out to others, especially widows, and who has consistently avoided political positions, except on crucial moral matters such as same-sex marriage rights and alcohol consumption laws. We feel strongly that by substituting President Monson for President Obama, we can give our children access to a more inclusive and inspiring speaker.”

LDS church officials indicated that the prophet would speak from the campus of Brigham Young University. “President Monson felt that, by speaking from the namesake university of one of the state’s founders, he would be able to share his message of faith and testimony without offending anyone’s political sensibilities.”

Monson’s theme will be “Strengthening Testimonies in the Latter Days.” Church spokesman Daniel Jenks explained that in these last days of trial and tribulation, “the most important knowledge one can accumulate is a testimony of our Savior. No other education can compare.”

Utah ACLU attorney Laurel Meyer said that she had been startled and outraged at first. “But then when I thought about it, I realized that all we would be seeing was a laundry list of platitudes and bad poetry. What’s the harm in that?”

Eagle Fortress president Gail Ruzkinsky applauded the state’s choice. “I have to tell you I was disgusted at the thought of our children being exposed to the virulent socialism of our so-called president, This choice leaves no doubt that, at least in Utah, we stand up for American ideals. We support God and country, not gays and socialized medicine.”

Church leaders indicated that the church would be happy to broadcast the prophet’s message to all fifty states, but so far, none of the governors contacted had accepted the offer.

Wordsearch

Last night I noticed my youngest doing a “wordsearch” puzzle. I assumed, incorrectly, that it was something from school, but at one point, he said, “Dad, I got all of them except ‘matrimony.’”

 Of course, I immediately wondered why my son was doing something with ‘matrimony’ in it, so I checked it out. The puzzle was labeled “Protect the Family” and had a list of words and phrases, ranging from “ELIMINATEFILTH” to “FAMILYHOMEEVENING” to “DEFENDMARRIAGE.”

I asked him where he got this puzzle, and he said he found it on the coffee table in the living room. It was then that I turned the page over and saw that it had been printed on the back of the Relief Society newsletter for the month.

I don’t know if my son even knows what matrimony means, but it seems really odd to put this kind of thing on a newsletter for grown women. Of course, it’s not really appropriate for kids, either.

What a weird church it is sometimes.

Buttars!

I’m sure most of my readers have heard about the audio tape of Utah state Senator Chris Buttars riffing on his hatred of gays. Thanks to him, I now know the definition of “pig sex” (and I really didn’t want to know). Clearly, the distinction between hating the sin and loving the sinner is as blurry as it ever was. Suffice it to say that Buttars hates gays.

Anyway, it’s not surprising to learn that Buttars thinks that gays are the “greatest threat to America” and that tolerance of homosexuals is a sign that the Second Coming is near. But reading the comments over on the KSL web site, I wonder if Buttars is just giving voice to what a lot of people think but are too embarrassed to say out loud.

To me, Buttars’s outburst and the widespread support he’s getting signal that we are not yet a tolerant society. In polite society we talk about equal rights and tolerating diversity, but in our private, unguarded moments we let slip how we really feel. Buttars, on the other hand, seems to be missing the gene that tells you what you can safely say in public. And in a strange way, I’m grateful for the cretinous Senator. He’s a daily reminder that we have a lot of work to do before we can say we are a free and tolerant country.

Why Proposition 8 is a lose-lose for the LDS church

I’ve already posted about why the church in its insular little way can benefit from their opposition to Prop 8, but in the long term, this is a watershed for the church, and not in a good way.

A lot of you are too young to remember the fight over the ERA. Just as now, the church got heavily involved in the campaign to defeat the amendment. They did the same kind of scare tactics: equal rights for women would destroy traditional families and would result in the destruction of the nuclear family and in turn society.

Church members who disagreed with the church’s position were demonized and excommunicated. Reading Sonia Johnson’s speeches and columns from that time, they seem pretty tame. But Sonia Johnson is still held up in Mormon circles as a sort of whacked-out Satanic figure.

But the difference back then was that the wider society wasn’t quite ready for the ERA. People were, to put it bluntly, much more conservative socially back then, despite the sexual revolution. The Mormon church was solidly in the middle of the “moral majority.” As maligned as Falwell et al., were, they were genuine power brokers in the Republican party.

Today, the religious right is still deeply entrenched in the GOP, but it is no longer respectable in the wider culture, so there are no real counterparts to the Falwells and Schlaflys of the late 70s. Instead, there is the insular world of talk radio. But Rush and Hannity and Glenn Beck do not have the organizing power to make themselves much of a political force. The religious right was just powerful enough to scuttle Mitt Romney’s campaign, but it wasn’t strong enough to prevent McCain’s. The Mormons should have learned that their political allies are few and fickle.

Simply put, the wider culture has moved on, and I suspect that the wording of the ERA would be pretty uncontroversial today. Likewise, American culture has been moving slowly towards tolerance of gays and lesbians.

But the LDS church still thinks it’s back in the 70s. It continues to use the heavy-handed tactics of the seventies: the fear-mongering, the siege mentality, and the demonization of their opponents in and out of the church. They actually think that a shipment of Chinese yard signs will be enough to awaken the moral majority again.

Even if Prop 8 wins, the church loses in the long run. It has forever wedded itself to reactionary social politics. When missionaries knock on doors, not just in California, a lot of people will think, “Oh, these are the people who hate gays.” Likewise, the ubiquitous PSAs about “family, isn’t it about time?” will fall flat because people know what kinds of families they are talking about.

Also, a small minority of the church membership seems to be more than a little appalled at the church’s position and heavy-handed tactics. For a lot of people, questioning whether the church is out of step with reality might be the final impetus to get them to question everything about the church.

Civilization is passing Mormonism by, and someday, the church will see that, probably when it’s too late.

Satan Is the Author of Proposition 8

Most of us are familiar with Proposition 8, the upcoming ballot initiative to amend the California state constitution to specifically outlaw same-sex marriage. In the last several months, California’s court system has declared laws banning same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional, so the only recourse for “defenders” of marriage is to amend the constitution.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, or Mormons) has encouraged its members to get involved in the effort to amend the constitution. In a letter read in congregations across California, the church’s First Presidency announced that it would “participate … in seeking [the amendment's] passage.” It also pleaded with its members to “do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time to assure that marriage in California is legally defined as being between a man and a woman. Our best efforts are required to preserve the sacred institution of marriage.”

Obviously, the church is well within its rights to support what it considers a “moral” issue, but it’s not surprising that members have begun to publicly demonize both homosexuals and proponents of same-sex marriage. Take, for instance, this article in Meridian Magazine, a publication aimed at Mormon families.

Some background is probably necessary. The Bible describes a “war in heaven,” wherein “Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. … And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him” (Rev. 12:7-9).

In Mormonism, this war in heaven came about before we were born, when we lived as spirits with God the Father. Two plans were presented for the salvation of humanity: God’s plan, which involved freedom of choice, and Satan’s plan, which would have taken away our freedom to choose and would have forced all humans to be saved (see Moses 4:1-4 and Doctrine and Covenants 29:36). One-third of the spirits followed Satan and were cast out to become “the devil and his angels” (D&C 29:37). In Mormon theology, this was the great battle between God and Satan, and our being here on earth tells us that we were among the two-thirds who followed God.

The article in question, in a bit of glorious hyperbole, compares the ballot initiative in California to this great battle in heaven. The author tells us that “this war has not ended, that only the battlefield has changed. That battlefield is now [you guessed it] California[,] and the parallels between that premortal conflict and the battle over the definition of marriage are striking.”

Ironically, he reminds us that “Satan rebelled against [God], and sought to destroy the agency of man” (while he’s urging us to restrict the choice of gay Californians). “Satan,” he says, “must have used very effective arguments to turn a third of the hosts of heaven away from the Father despite pure knowledge of God’s will.” These arguments, he tells us, are being used just as effectively by the devil to trick people into supporting Proposition 8. Let’s go through them, as he sees them:

1. Equality of outcome, which “always be the beginning point for those opposed to any part of God’s plan.” And here’s the slick lie that Prop 8’s proponents are using to fool people:

Gays and lesbians are people, too. They have the same emotions as anyone else. It is only fair that they be given equal rights. They should not be second-class citizens.

Do you see any “equality of outcome” in this statement? I don’t. What I see is equality of opportunity and equal access to choice. So, point one fails rather miserably.

2. Sympathy. In heaven, Satan apparently played on our emotions in telling us, “Under the Father’s plan, some of your friends will never return.” Similarly, we are told that “emotion is evoked by specific situations, in this case having two women in their 80s be the first same-sex marriage in California.” Since when are sympathy and empathy and desire for other people’s happiness wrong? Oh, right. They’re wrong when such things oppose God.

3. Hate. He’s right that on both sides, “the opposition [is being] shamed, vilified, and demonized.” But how can people who claim that gay-rights advocates are allied with Satan object to being called “Christian extremists, anti-gay, right-wing radicals, old-fashioned, hung-up, homophobes, bigots, stupid, intolerant, mean-spirited, knuckle-draggers”? Pot, meet kettle.

4. Change. Just as Satan apparently told us that God’s “old ways” haven’t worked out, we are being told by the forces of darkness that “it’s time for a change.” This argument seems to rest on the idea that change is never good, but traditions and rules must never change. It reminds me of the argument in Britain a few years ago that hunters had the right to have dogs chase and rip to pieces foxes in the name of tradition. Not all tradition is worth perpetuating. If it’s time to change marriage, let it be done based on sound arguments, not on some bull-headed resistance to change in general.

5. Guarantee. In our premortal existence, Satan promised us all a place in heaven with no possibility of damnation. All it would cost was our freedom. In the battle for same-sex marriage, the guarantee that “same-sex marriage will not harm anyone. Heterosexual marriage will not be hurt. Nothing will change except all people will have every right that anyone else has.” Of course, rather than actually argue what it will or won’t change, the author prefers to demonize his opponents.

The article concludes with some amazing rhetoric:

The stakes are critical. If same-sex marriage advocates can dilute and hollow out the central part of the Creator’s plan, the whole structure collapses — the family, the nation, and in time civilization itself. The time has come for those of us who believe that God, not man, created marriage (fortunately still a majority) to take a stand and defend it.

He may well be right that the stakes are critical, but a serious issue deserves serious discussion, not this kind of garbage. Of course, I’m an ex-Mormon, so I’m already one of Satan’s minions. Were I still a resident of California, I would be voting against Proposition 8, but because I am not, I will do what I can and stand up against this kind of overblown hatred.