Hat-tip to Main Street Plaza for the video.

If you’re a resident of one of nine seemingly randomly selected mid-sized (mostly) non-coastal American cities, you’re the lucky audience for a new series of commercials advertising… Mormons. They are not quite explicitly ads for the Church of Latter-day Saints, they are just ads for Mormons, themselves. They are about how Mormons are regular people who enjoy things like surfing and riding motorcycles.

Here in New York, there’s no evidence this is happening. But I just spent a week out in the heartland, and it was inescapable. The ads are running in “Baton Rouge, Colorado Springs, Jacksonville, Pittsburgh, Rochester, Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Tucson and Minneapolis.”

As far as I can tell, these 30-second ads are not yet available online. But here is an extended version of one of the ads:

The ads have been cropping up on Facebook, too:

(He’s a husband and a “Mormom“?)  

The Salon article continues:

Mormons, obviously, want to prove that they are regular people, just like us, and some of them are even cool, young, attractive people who ride skateboards.

But… are Mormons just trying to convince Americans that Mormons are “normal,” so that in 2012 they’ll consider voting for … Mitt Romney? (These ads are running in four or five potential swing states, after all.)

I think it’s far too cynical to suggest that these ads are an extension Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. They are just part of a larger strategy from the LDS Church to rehabilitate its image, which suffered considerably because of Proposition 8. For instance, the LDS Church also recently unveiled the new mormon.org. Mormon.org, as opposed to lds.org, is intended for nonmembers. There, you can read profiles of everyday Mormons and chat online with missionaries (a function that I imagine is frequently abused ha ha).

Maintaining a positive public image is crucial for proselytic faiths like Mormonism. So in that respect, this ad campaign and the new mormon.org make sense. But there is also a danger to Mormonism in becoming too mainstream. Mormons have long prided themselves as a “peculiar people” with peculiar doctrines. Full admission into the religious mainstream may require that Mormonism lose its uniqueness. Brigham Young was worried about this very thing:

I would rather pass through all the misery and sorrow, the troubles and trials of the Saints, than to have the religion of Christ [Mormonism] become popular with the world. … I care not what the world thinks, nor what it says, so they leave us unmolested in the exercise of our inherent rights. Take a straightforward course, and meet the jeers and frowns of the wicked. (Journal of Discourses 10: 297)

This tension within Mormonism—wanting to be accepted, but different; in the world, but not of it—is perhaps best expressed by my favorite Pat Bagley cartoon:

It will be interesting to see how the LDS Church balances popularity and peculiarity in the years to come.

So here we have a person comparing gays to “suicide bombers” and “animals with urges.” I know several Mormons who either support gay marriage or are sympathetic to LGBT concerns, but comments like the one above remind me of just how socially conservative most Mormons are.

I won’t bother to explain why what she wrote is offensive. I doubt I need to. Let’s instead focus a couple of unintentionally hilarious typos in the comment. (Because sometimes levity is the best response to hate).

First, she claims that gay suicides are terrorizing Mormons by making them “feel quilty.” Not guilty, mind you. Quilty. And then she asks that we “bridal the natural man.” Wait, we’re supposed to take the natural man as our bride? I didn’t think that was kosher in her religion. She meant to say “bridle the natural man,” of course, but that’s arguably more sexually deviant—kinky, even. 

In the wake of several gay Mormon suicides, concerned Mormons are asking what their church could do to better minister to gay members. Here are what I hope to be a few constructive suggestions:

1. Work out a consistent theology regarding sex. Let me explain. If you’re going to oppose homosexuality on the grounds that it perverts the procreative end of sex, then treat homosexuality as you would other non-procreative acts—like masturbation, heterosexual sodomy, and contraceptive use. In other words, don’t treat homosexuality as a special, excommunicable sin.

(I of course don’t think homosexuality is a sin, but I cannot realistically expect the LDS Church to share my view any time soon).

2. Stop anti-gay marriage politicking. I’m not asking that the church embrace civil gay marriage, but to tolerate it. Gay marriage will be an inevitable reality in a decade or two, so the church will need to adapt (as it did with polygamy, interracial marriage, and black priesthood). Why not adapt sooner rather than later?

And if the church cannot abstain from anti-gay marriage politics, then it should at least support other gay rights measures like it did with the Salt Lake City non-discrimination ordinance.

3. Repudiate ignorant teachings about homosexuality. For many years, church leaders taught that homosexuality was caused by sin and cured through repentance and marriage. This teaching had profoundly hurtful implications. At BYU and elsewhere, for example, gay Mormons underwent traumatizing reparative therapies in a futile effort to change their sexual orientation.

The LDS Church has made progress since those days, to be sure. LDS leaders today are more careful when addressing homosexuality. In a recent press conference, Elders Oaks and Wickman said that the church has no opinion about the causes of homosexuality and that some people cannot change their sexual orientation. That’s a pretty tepid repudiation of past teachings, though—if it’s even a repudiation at all.

I’d like to see church leaders say in no uncertain terms that homosexuality is not a choice and that homosexuals deserve our love and understanding. General conference in October would be the ideal opportunity for this message.

4. Dialogue with LGBT groups. Back in 2008, the LDS Church entertained the possibility of meeting with Affirmation, an LDS gay support and advocacy group. That meeting never happened, unfortunately, in part because the LDS Church wanted it to be private and Affirmation wanted it to be public. Despite that disagreement, the LDS Church should try to re-engage Affirmation and related groups in open dialogue.

5. Love. LDS leaders and members say they love homosexuals, and I don’t doubt them. But they need to show that love. Acting upon the above suggestions would go a long way in doing just that, in my opinion.

My list is by no means comprehensive. These were just a few ideas I had. What do you think the LDS Church could do to improve their relations with their gay members and the larger LGBT community without totally sacrificing its teachings?

I’m glad I went, though. I imagined that my visits were a kind of a sociological field study of Utah Mormon culture. But it doesn’t take a sociologist to make the following observation: Mormon services are boring.

I’ve made a similar observation before. And it’s not an observation unique to me or non-Mormons. On Monday, Mormon blogger Jana Riess asked the question, “Why Are Mormon Church Meetings So Dull?” She offered five pretty insightful reasons.

1) We no longer expect any spiritual manifestations. The number one reason why our services bore even our most devout members to tears is that American Mormons don’t expect the Holy Spirit to show up in anything more than a warm, fuzzy, non-threatening way. I say American Mormons because elsewhere around the world, Mormons still have the early saints’ experiences of praying for the manifestations of the Spirit, being slain in the Spirit, speaking in tongues, and other things that scare the knee-length shorts off American Mormons today. For a denomination that invests heavily in the idea of being the direct continuation of the New Testament Church, we have few religious experiences now that would be remotely recognizable to believers in the first century. When we don’t truly expect God to show up, is it any wonder when He doesn’t?

2) We think we’re there primarily to learn about God, not to worship God. It’s no accident that we call our Sunday gatherings “sacrament meetings” rather than worship services. We do lots of good things in those meetings, like taking communion every week (one of the few things we consistently do right). But if you take a straw poll of Mormons and ask them why they’re there, “worship God” is not going to show up in your top five. At best, we relegate worship to the temple (which only helps about one in five Mormons), and at worst, we don’t think about worship at all. Yet the scriptures name worship as our primary reason for gathering each week. Unfortunately, we no longer know how to do it unless an insider-outsider like Gladys Knight shows the way by presenting a wonderful fireside or special event that takes us out of ourselves to worship the one who made us.

3) Our music is confining and often funereal. For a supposedly joyful people, Mormons are missing a crucial element of joy that should accompany our worship services. We sing three hymns per service, sometimes four, and they are often lovely. Beyond that we do not venture. We neglect the vast richness of the world’s musical heritage, especially the gorgeous offerings of sacred music through the ages. Whether this failure is a byproduct of Mormon theological chauvinism or simple ignorance I do not know. I feel a terrible sadness about the disconnect that exists in Mormonism between the exalted beauty of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which touches thousands of hearts with its renditions of music both sacred and secular, and the anemic, impoverished approach to music that typically exists at the ward level, where whole classes of instruments, styles, and composers are simply barred from the door.

4) Our talks suck. I know I’ve been harping on this point for ages …, but the situation never seems to improve. Considering that all Mormons are expected to speak regularly in church—in my ward, about once a year—it’s perfectly ridiculous that we offer no training in how to do it. (Well, no training on how to do it better; every time we sit in sacrament meeting and hear someone doing it badly, we’re being taught that irrelevant mediocrity is the expected norm.) I think it’s terrific that we expect all members to give talks, and of course it’s only natural that there would be a wide variance in quality. But some training in content and delivery would help everyone improve, and would also raise the confidence of those Latter-day Saints who would rather have a root canal than give a talk in public.

5) Nobody seems prepared to envision this differently. This, along with point #1, is our most pressing problem: where there is no vision, the people perish. Our leaders have not made weekly worship a priority. I’ve been a church member for 17 years now, and in that time the only changes I’ve seen in sacrament meeting are that we’ve stopped singing the practice hymn and we no longer have official missionary farewells. Sorry, but that’s not enough. We need men and women who are theologically trained, who understand what a worship service is intended to accomplish, and who can comb the scriptures and our own history for examples of how to make Sundays more fulfilling.

To my Mormon friends: Do you agree that LDS Sunday services are often dull? And if so, do you agree with what Jana Riess identifies as the problems?

This is probably a petty complaint, but I’m annoyed with the Mormon Times and their rating system. You can only rate an article as “insightful,” “inspirational,” or “informative.” I’d ask that another option be “insipid.”

I know that Mormons are generally averse to a “spirit of contention,” but must everything be so sanitized and faith-promoting? Meh.

Police are looking for a man caught on tape trying to set fire to the Los Angeles Temple Church of Latter-Day Saints church.

The man walked onto the church property, located at 10777 Santa Monica Boulevard in West Los Angeles, around 10:30 a.m. on Many 17.

He had combustible material inside a backpack and thermo cup, according to police.

The man wasn’t able to get inside the locked church doors, but three hours later, a suspicious fire broke out in a garden on the church property.

Police described the suspect as Middle Eastern or of Asian Indian decent and in his late 20’s. He was last seen wearing a red T-shirt and blue jeans.

I sure hope that this was not a reaction to the LDS Church’s involvement in Proposition 8 (and we currently have no reason to suspect that it is). But whatever the would-be arson’s motive was, it was a bad one.

The Los Angeles temple would not have been the first temple destroyed by fire. An arson burned down the Nauvoo temple in 1848. And in 2003, the Apia Samoa temple was also destroyed by fire, though no foul play was involved. The Logan temple nearly joined this list, when in 1917 a fire damaged much of its southeast stairway.

Joseph Smith made a lot of enemies the last year of his life. People were afraid that he had too much political power. Smith was already the mayor of Nauvoo and the commander of a formidable militia. Then in 1844, he also ran for president and was even coronated “King of Israel.”

Dissent was swelling within Smith’s own ranks as well. William Law, formerly a counselor to Smith in the First Presidency, and other disaffected Mormons joined together and created the Nauvoo Expositor. Its first (and final) issue, published June 7th, 1844, exposed Smith’s practice of polygamy and accused him of theocratic ambitions. Smith and the Nauvoo city council declared the paper a “public nuisance” and ordered its printing press destroyed. They reasoned it was necessary for the public safety of Nauvoo’s citizens. But the Illinois government saw it as an un-American affront to the freedom of press, so Smith, his brother, and fifteen other city council members were imprisoned at Carthage on charges of treason and inciting riot.

Only two days later, a mob intent on killing the Mormon prophet stormed the jail. Smith defended himself with a smuggled-in pistol, but was hopelessly outnumbered. He was shot three times while trying to escape out the second-story window. As Smith fell out the window, he reportedly cried “Oh Lord, my God!” These words begin the masonic distress call, and some suppose that Smith—a Mason himself—attempted this call to ask mercy of the Masons in the mob. If his last words were indeed a cry for mercy, it went unheeded. Smith was fatally shot once he landed from his fall.

Smith became revered as a martyr by his followers, and his death further catalyzed the Latter Day Saint movement. Outside of Mormonism, he is counted among the most inventive and influential religious figures.

I don’t mean to demonize or eulogize Joseph Smith with this post. I just wanted to acknowledge an important day in Mormon and American history.

His execution has renewed a national debate about capital punishment. I oppose the death penalty, but I think the firing squad is preferable to other methods. Gardner actually requested it; it’s a quick death. I also agree with what Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, in a Fox News editorial, wrote regarding the firing squad: “I support firing squads because of the personal responsibility they impose on those who execute, and because the full awareness of the horror of taking another life may actually lead to fewer executions.”

But this is not the appropriate forum to discuss the merits of capital punishment. I mention this story for its connection to Utah and Mormonism.

From the Associated Press:

Of the 49 executions carried out in the state since the 1850s, 40 were by firing squad. Before Gardner’s death, the most recent was John Albert Taylor, who was executed on Jan. 26, 1996, for raping and strangling an 11-year-old girl.

Historians say the firing squad persisted in Utah long after the rest of the nation abandoned it because of the 19th century doctrine of the state’s predominant religion. Early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believed in the concept of “blood atonement“—that only through spilling one’s own blood could a condemned person adequately atone for their crimes and be redeemed in the next life.

Asked by the Deseret News in 1996 why he chose the firing squad, Ronnie Lee Gardner said, “I guess it’s just my Mormon heritage.”

There has been so much attention to the blood atonement that the LDS Church felt it necessary to release a statement about it on Wednesday:

In the mid-19th century, when rhetorical, emotional oratory was common, some church members and leaders used strong language that included notions of people making restitution for their sins by giving up their own lives.

However, so-called “blood atonement,” by which individuals would be required to shed their own blood to pay for their sins, is not a doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We believe in and teach the infinite and all-encompassing atonement of Jesus Christ, which makes forgiveness of sin and salvation possible for all people.

I don’t have any commentary to provide to this story (*sighs of relief from every reader*). I’m posting this because it’s not often that the blood atonement makes it way into the national news.

While in prayer, Smith was overtaken by a dark demonic power—so much so that he was rendered paralyzed and mute. He was delivered from this power by “two personages” (God the Father & the Son), who descended above him in a bright beam of light.

God told him that the “professors” of the different denominations were “corrupt” and that “all their creeds were an abomination in [my] sight;” he was commanded to join none of them. This story subjected Smith to “bitter persecution” from all religious sects in the area.

Above is the official version of the First Vision that was written in 1838, nearly twenty years after the event supposedly happened, and which today appears in LDS scriptures. The story is fundamental to the founding of Mormonism and most members accept this account uncritically. But its veracity has been the matter of much debate.

There were 14 published accounts of the First Vision during Joseph Smith’s lifetime, of which Smith wrote or dictated 4. And among the various accounts, there are glaring omissions and discrepancies. Here, I will discuss (albeit cursorily) a few of them. But before I do that, it’s important to understand Joseph Smith’s environment.

Early 19th century upstate New York was a breeding ground for many religious movements—the Shakers, the Oneida Society, Millerism, Mormonism, et al. And in so hyperreligious a climate, spiritual experiences like Smith’s were almost commonplace.

In 1815, Norris Stearns published an account of God and Jesus Christ appearing to him in a “bodily shape like a man.” Evangelist Charles G. Finney, in 1821, went to a grove to pray, but when he began, he was arrested by a feeling of despair and was unable to speak. In 1823, Asa Wild reported a vision of Christ in Amsterdam, New York, telling him that all the churches were false. And three years later, a preacher at the Palmyra Academy said he saw Christ descend “in a glare of brightness, exceeding ten-fold the brilliancy of the meridian Sun.”

Some of these stories were printed in the local press and widely known. Yet there is little evidence that Smith’s experience—despite his claimed persecution—received any such attention. Virtually nothing was written about the First Vision in the several years following its occurrence. In fact, as LDS historian James B. Allen wrote in a 1966 Dialogue article, “the general [early] membership of the Church knew little, if anything, about it.” Not until the church abandoned polygamy did the First Vision receive significant emphasis.

The earliest accounts we have of anything resembling the First Vision date to 1827 and read as frontier tall tales. Willard Chase and Joseph Knight Jr. knew the Smith family from their involvement in “money-digging,” a practice where hidden treasure was sought using divining rods or seer stones. Chase employed Smith for this service, and Knight occasionally worked alongside Smith in the money-digging ventures. Both men heard from the Smith family that Joseph Smith had seen a spirit who informed him of a buried ancient record written upon gold plates.

Mormons will recognize this as the Moroni encounter, not the First Vision story. It seems that Joseph Smith did not readily share the more overtly religious story of the First Vision until 1832, many years after the event’s supposed occurrence, and a time when Smith was trying to establish himself as the leader of a new church.

In the 1832 account, Smith writes that he felt convicted of his sins after studying the Bible. He then went into the woods to “cry unto the Lord for mercy.” The Lord heard his prayer and descended from the heavens in “pillar of light.” The Lord forgave Smith of all his transgressions, admonished him to keep the commandments, and warned that the judgment of the world was nigh. Then, a few years later, Smith was visited by an angel who also forgave Smith of his sins and told him about the plates.

This story will sound more familiar to Mormons, but it is still markedly different from the official 1838 account. According to the 1832 account, Smith didn’t wonder which church was true—he had already determined that no church was “built upon the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” This prayer was also not concerned with his salvation, as it is in the 1832 account. He doesn’t say that both God and Jesus Christ were present, only the latter. And Smith puts his age at 15, not 14, in this account.

In 1834-35, Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith published the first history of Mormonism in The Messenger and Advocate, an LDS periodical. This account credits a local religious revival for instilling in Smith a desire to receive a remission of his sins and to “know for himself of the certainty and reality of pure and holy religion.” More than that, he wanted to know if a Supreme Being existed at all. An angel appeared in his bedroom—as opposed to in a grove—and told Smith his sins were forgiven and informed him of the existence and location of the gold plates. Here, Cowdery recalls that Smith was 17.

The Messenger and Advocate’s account is interesting because it combines Smith’s concerns over salvation with the revelation about the gold plates. Some previous accounts and all subsequent ones split these elements into two distinct events separated by three years (the First Vision and Moroni’s bedside visitation), as Mormons understand it to be the case today. Cowdery, though, wasn’t alone in conflating the First Vision and Moroni’s visitation. Lucy Mack Smith does the same in her biography of her son, as does William Smith, Joseph’s brother.

Also in 1835, Joseph Smith shared a version of the First Vision with Joshua the Jewish minister. This time, Smith is 14. He sees two unidentified personages and many angels. He also reports that at 17, he saw “another vision of angels,” which would suggest he was visited by more than just Moroni. That same year, he gave a similar account to Erastus Holmes, in which he only mentions being visited by angels in 1820.

These are the accounts that precede the canonized 1838 account, from which they differ considerably. To review:

How old was Joseph Smith at the time of the First Vision? 14? 15? Cowdery says he was 17. Age may be a minor difference, but it is a difference all the same.

Who exactly did Smith see? Two unnamed angels? A multitude of angels? Just the angel Moroni? Jesus Christ? Both God the Father and the Son? These discrepancies are sometimes explained as part of Smith’s evolving understanding of God. It’s argued that when Smith held a vaguely trinitarian (or more accurately, modalist) view of God, as is evident in several verses of the Book of Mormon, he reported seeing one personage.  But once he taught that God the Father and the Son were distinct beings, he reported seeing two personages. So the doctrine informed the First Vision, and not vice versa.

Mormon apologists deny that this is the case. They claim that Smith long understood God the Father and the Son to be distinct. In an 1831 vision, for example, John Whitmer and Joseph Smith “saw the heavens opened, and the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of the Father…” In other words, Smith saw two personages in this vision. But curiously, just a year later in his 1832 account, Smith wrote that he saw one personage at the First Vision—the Lord. So I’m not totally convinced that Smith’s evolving understanding of God accounts for the disparate reports of what Smith saw at the First Vision.

Another difference among the accounts concern Smith’s motivation. Was it to receive a remission of sin? To find out which church to join? To find out if God even exists? A couple of accounts credit a local religious revival as the impetus for Smith’s taking to the grove in prayer. There seems to have been no such revival in the Palmyra area around 1820. But revival or no, there certainly would have been plenty of religious excitement to inspire Smith’s prayerful questions.

These differences are important because they belie any one account’s credibility. It gives us reason to doubt that the official 1838 account is a reliable recollection of the First Vision. Marvin S. Hill, an American history professor at Brigham Young University, suggested that if any one account should be trusted, it is the 1832 account written by Smith himself.

So what best explains the evolution of the First Vision? “When Joseph began his autobiography in 1838,” Fawn Brodie writes in No Man Knows My History, “he was writing not of his own life but of one who had already become the most celebrated prophet of the nineteenth century. And he was writing for his own people” (25).

Grant H. Palmer, a former LDS educator, makes a similar point in his book An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins:

A leadership crisis began in Kirtland on 7 November 1837. Frederick G. Williams, a counselor in the First Presidency, left the church…On 10 March 1838, John Whitmer, one of the eight witnesses to the Book of Mormon, was excommunicated. On 25 March, Martin Harris told a public meeting that none of the witnesses had physically seen or handled the plates, that they had not seen the plates with their “natural eyes.” As a result, Apostles John F. Boynton, Luke Johnson, and other church members renounced the Book of Mormon (246).

Palmer’s argument is basically that Smith wrote the 1838 account with the above crisis in mind in order to shore up his support. There’s an obvious logic to this explanation, but I find it ultimately unsatisfying. If the 1838 account was primarily a response to an immediate crisis, why would Smith wait until 1842 to have it published?

I think that people generally just have a tendency to embellish their experiences over time. Joseph Smith was probably no exception. Daniel Hendrix, who helped set the type for the Book of Mormon, said that Smith “could never tell a common occurrence in his daily life without embellishing the story with his imagination…” What’s more, Smith’s embellishments needn’t have been calculated. Not only do people misremember things (especially about ethereal experiences), they often unknowingly manufacture memories.

But unlike some Joseph Smith’s detractors, I actually believe that he had some seminal religious experience in his youth. I don’t believe, however, that it was an actual encounter with the divine. I think it was instead a case of sleep paralysis. When I was Mormon, I mistook my episodes of sleep paralysis to be profound religious experiences. Smith could have easily made the same mistake.

Dr. Robert Bushman, a linguist and instructional psychologist, persuasively argues that the First Vision was an out-of-body experience (closely related to sleep paralysis). He notes that paralytic seizure and seeing a being or beings within a light are common characteristics of out-of-body experiences; these phenomena are often present in alleged alien abductions, for instance.

Much more can be said (and has been) about the First Vision. I just wanted to briefly address a few of the disparities among the accounts (a full comparison chart of the different accounts can be found here) and offer a naturalistic explanation of the First Vision—one that does not necessarily dismiss Joseph Smith as insincere or dishonest.

I hope that my LDS readers will wrestle with the different accounts and their implications. And for my fellow atheists and ex-Mormons, I hope that you’ll be careful not to overstate the contradictions among the accounts. You may remember that I attempted a First Vision post last month, but took it down after a friend of mine identified a serious factual error. My mistake was that I relied on a source (lds-mormon.com) that omitted a critical part of the 1832 First Vision account—a part that effectively rebutted a popular claim that the 1834-35 account by Smith and Cowdery was the first to distinguish Moroni’s visitation from the First Vision. I have tried to be more responsible with my research this time around. But this article is still a work in progress, so don’t take this (or anything I write) as foolproof.

As always, your criticisms and suggestions are welcome.

The Book of Mammon reads like an entertaining and informative exposé of the LDS Church’s corporate practices, from the banal to the unusual. It has been receiving rave reviews. C. L. Hanson over at Letters from a broad wrote a review of the book that has further piqued my interest. Informed by the book, she points out an insightful irony:

According to Daymon’s tale, working at the COB has all of the crazy office politics you’d expect at an ordinary fortune-500 corporation. There’s a big difference, though, and it’s not just the church devotionals on company time or opening meetings with prayer. The problem is that they have absolutely no motivation to figure out whether their products are useful to their consumers. Mormons pay 10% of their income per year to the corporation (in order to be eligible for the saving ordinances in the temple), and the corporation gives back manuals, magazines, films, scriptures, garments, etc. — but the direct market feedback that comes from consumers selecting the goods they purchase is completely cut off.

As I’ve said before the private sector and the public sector each have their strengths and weaknesses. In economics, it’s not a question of choosing which one is “right” and which one is “wrong” — it’s a question of optimizing your strategy by using the best of both. The COB has the worst of both because it has the advantages of neither: there’s no market incentive to produce good products, and there’s no public oversight either.

(The biggest irony is how ferociously right-wing the Mormons are, yet they give so much money to a corporation that functions just like the very worst stereotypes of the Soviet government economic system.)

You may also want to check out Daymon Smith’s recent Mormon Stories interview, where he discusses his book, post-Manifesto polygamy, and the history of correlation in the LDS Church.

Mormons made up the majority of the Yes Campaign’s funds and, despite representing less than 2% of California’s population, they comprised 80-90% of the early volunteers who walked door-to-door in election precincts. I have often defended Mormons’ involvement in Prop 8; they have every right to campaign for and donate to whatever cause they choose. But if, as this clip suggests, church leaders coerced support from their members, that is indefensible.

8: The Mormon Proposition opens in select theaters June 18 and is available on DVD July 13. The film has received mixed reviews. I’ve heard that it’s unabashedly one-sided and preaches to the choir, which is unfortunate because there needs to be a dialogue between the gay community and the LDS community. But if this clip is any indication, the film should nonetheless be interesting. Perhaps we should make a SHAFT event of seeing it.

They are missing out on the marketplace of ideas other universities enjoy. I’m not talking about the filtered porn or lacking cable selection, but the onerous censorship of information about the government and the LDS Church with which the university is affiliated.

In 1998, the American Association of University Professors voted to censure BYU for infringements on academic freedom that were “distressingly common” and a climate for academic freedom that was “distressingly poor.” Despite this condemnation, BYU has persisted in a systematic purge of any freethinking faculty. The two most recent victims: BYU professors Steven E. Jones and Jeffrey Nielsen.

Just a few months ago, tenured physics professor Jones was placed on paid leave because of an alternative 9/11 theory (one I disagree with) he advocated outside of his classroom. Jones has colleagues across the country who share his views and have not been subject to discipline. Exhausted from having to endure the controversy, Jones has since retired from BYU altogether.

Nielsen was a philosophy instructor and is a faithful Mormon. Following the church’s statement in favor of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, Nielsen exercised his free agency and respectfully disagreed with the church in a Salt Lake Tribune editorial. Due solely to Nielsen’s editorial, he was fired, or, as BYU put it, his contract “failed to be renewed.”

BYU’s deficit in academic freedom is an obvious deterrent to my ever attending there, but of more concern to me is the institutional discrimination against its gay students. The following is found in BYU’s Honor Code:

Advocacy of a homosexual lifestyle (whether implied or explicit) or any behaviors that indicate homosexual conduct, including those not sexual in nature, are inappropriate and violate the Honor Code.

Consider how dehumanizing this policy is. Consider what it means for the hundreds of gay students at BYU. They have no community in which to confide; instead, they are told suppress who they are. Moreover, the policy’s vague language gives BYU more latitude to discriminate.

The school has enforced a harsh interpretation of this policy, and this enforcement has a long, infamous, and well-documented history. BYU’s security forces would spy on (suspected) gay students on campus and pursue them off campus on their weekend exoduses to clubs in downtown Salt Lake City. License plates were recorded and put through the university’s database for matches. And, somewhat humorously, security personnel would sometimes go undercover, infiltrate the clubs, and try to draw ‘favors’ from students. If caught, these students faced potential expulsion. This represents just one example of BYU’s grossly unequal application of the Honor Code against its gay students.

As a private university, BYU can claim the right to maintain this discriminatory policy. It cannot, however, claim impunity from criticism. Having the right and being right are different matters entirely.

In BYU’s defense, it did try to help many gay students with their “mental health problem” (as LDS Social Services once referred to homosexuality). That help: reparative therapy—an ineffectual and harmful attempt to ‘cure’ homosexuality. For years, BYU, as directed by LDS Social Services, subjected gay Mormons as young as 15 to aversive techniques like shock therapy.

Affirmation, an LDS gay rights group, has documented the school’s use of shock therapy, where the counselor would produce a mild electric shock in conjunction with slides of males in various stages of dress; no shocks were administered with the images of females. The group has also exposed the use of Ipecac, a vomit inducing drug, in place of an electric shock. As early as 1969, bowing to scientific pressures and seeking to avoid lawsuits, BYU publicly distanced itself from these techniques. Privately, however, it did employ them throughout the ’70s, ’80s, and even on at least one occasion into the ’90s. (Shock therapy was once popular in the United States, but fell into disrepute decades ago).

Jayce Cox was referred to BYU by his bishop to undergo shock therapy in 1995. Electrodes were attached to his hands, arms, torso and genitals. His emotional and physical scars serve as a testament to the horrific experience. And the fact the Jayce, along with countless others, not only consented to but paid thousands for this therapy is a stark indictment of a culture which demands conformity and—for those who cannot conform—breeds self-loathing submission. Not surprisingly, Utah leads the nation in suicides among young men, many of whom are homosexual.

“You’re taught that the leaders of the church will never lie to you, never deceive you and you’re taught to believe them blindly,” Jayce lamented in a 2000 interview with the Las Vegas Bugle. “I believed that through [reparative therapy], faith, temple attendance, prayer and fasting I would be healed. I believed that through God anything’s possible.”

Comparatively, BYU today is more hospitable to homosexuals than it had once been. In a 1966 commencement speech, then BYU President Ernest Wilkinson asked all gays to leave campus immediately. He did not want others to be “contaminated” by their presence. And the LDS Church itself, being a social institution, has already had to divorce itself from its more draconian traditions: polygamy, hostility toward the federal government, and overt racism. Societal pressures may demand yet another convenient revelation of the First Presidency to rescind the church’s current homophobia.

Update: In April 2007, BYU amended its Honor Code policy toward its gay students. The revised policy can be found here.

The exact consequence of these changes has yet to be seen, but they at least constitute a hesitant step in the right direction.

Soulforce’s recent protest at BYU undoubtedly deserves most of the credit for this good news, but I hope, in some modest way, the circulation and publication of my article helped too.

For more information about BYU’s use of shock therapy, or for a more comprehensive history of the LDS Church and homosexuality, refer to Connell O’Donovan’s “Crime Against Nature” and Dichotomy’s LDS Gay History Timeline.

Negroes in this life are denied the Priesthood; under no circumstances can they hold this delegation of authority from the Almighty (Book of Abraham 1:20-27). The gospel message of salvation is not carried affirmatively to them…Negroes are not equal with other races where the receipt of certain spiritual blessings are concerned, particularly the priesthood and the temple blessings that flow there from, but this inequality is not of man’s origin. It is the Lord’s doing, is based on his eternal laws of justice, and grows out of the lack of Spiritual valiance of those concerned in their first estate. (Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 1966, pages 527-528)

This and other unpalatable comments were later removed or softened, but the church continues to be embarrassed by the book’s earlier editions and the lasting impacts they’ve had on Mormon thought.

Deseret Book says that the decision has to do with Mormon Doctrine‘s poor sales, but local bookseller Tony Weller (of Sam Weller’s) maintains that there is a “solid and constant demand for it.”

Their dropping of Mormon Doctrine reflects less on the book’s sales and more on the LDS Church. It signals a positive change—an acknowledgment by the church of the need to outgrow the old Mormonism that McConkie embodied.

Since graduating from USU, I have been in an existential funk of sorts. With no job or school, I have had a lot of time to think about my past. Going through some old junk (emails, letters, journals, etc.), I was reminded of just how devout a Mormon I was. So for our collective amusement, I thought I’d share what I re-discovered.

One of the first things that I found in a small box buried away in my closet was an envelope entitled “Open when ALONE.” In it was Elder Mark E. Peterson infamous “Steps in Overcoming Masturbation” article. I was planning to give this talk to a friend as a Christmas present (WTF?!), but apparently never did, seeing as that I still possess the envelope. Here are a few of the “guidelines to self-control” that Elder Peterson recommended (several of which I followed):

*If you are associated with other persons having this same problem, you must break off their friendship. Never associate with other people having the same weakness.

*When you bathe, do not admire yourself in a mirror. Never stay in the bath more than five or six minutes—just long enough to bathe and dry and dress.

*In very severe cases it may be necessary to tie a hand to the bed frame with a tie in order that the habit of masturbating in a semi-sleep condition can be broken.

*In bed…dress yourself for the night so securely that you cannot easily touch your vital parts, and so that it would be difficult and time consuming for you to remove those clothes.

*It is sometimes helpful to have a physical object to use in overcoming this problem. A Book of Mormon, firmly held in hand, even in bed at night has proven helpful in extreme cases.

*Be outgoing and friendly. Force yourself to be with others and learn to enjoy working and talking to them. Use principles of developing friendships found in books such as How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

*[I]f you are tempted to masturbate, think of having to bathe in a tube of worms, and eat several of them as you do the act.

I also came across a talk I gave in sacrament meeting back in early 2004. My talk was “The Case for Christianity,” and it was a response to Nietzsche, who I studied briefly in high school debate. For those interested, here is the talk in full:

Good afternoon brothers and sisters.

There are many in the world today who would tell us, “God is dead.” In order for this to be true, however, God must first have lived. And I am here to testify that he did indeed live, and, in fact, continues to live, for it is his “work and glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”

This illustrates the fundamental flaw in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche was a 19th century German philosopher and is considered…one of the most important and influential critics of Christianity. His philosophy was of the world, and it taints, to this day, our culture and society. It is a philosophy we must understand and fully reject, for the Nietzsches of our day continue to advance pride over love, selfishness over selflessness, and pleasure over progress.

For Nietzsche, love was the ultimate weakness of Christian thought. According to him, compassion (or pity as he called it) established a concrete class of slaves. It was an obstruction to progress, for autonomous beings should not limit themselves with such “destructive emotions,” but rather acknowledge one’s natural motives and feelings. “Egoism is not evil,” Nietzsche proclaimed. In other words, Nietzsche felt as though the only obligations we have are to ourselves, and that we should not be enslaved by trifle emotions like love and empathy.

This line of thought is a major offense to God and Christ. Christ was asked, “Which is the greatest commandment?” to which he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In John 13:35, Christ teaches that by love all men shall know that we are his disciples. If we are to take upon ourselves the name of Christ, then only in rejecting the world’s pride and embracing our Lord’s love can we call ourselves Christians.

Nietzsche’s second criticism of Christianity was Christ’s call to service. The fruits of our efforts must be for our benefit exclusively, he contended. The individual has a finite worth, and at the point in which we give a part of ourselves to someone else, we limit and decrease our worth.

With a personal testimony of service, I know this is not the case. Service, when done with sincerity, strengthens both those you serve and yourself. We feel edified in our service for we know that inasmuch as we have done it unto one of the least of our brethren, we have done it unto Christ. The fact that we align ourselves with the humblest and meekest among us is a Christian’s strength, not weakness, and it sets Christianity apart from most other philosophies.

Nietzsche and the world are mistaken to measure progress superficially. To define one’s true wealth by gold and land is to devalue God’s Plan of Salvation. We find Nietzsche in contradiction when he claims Christians confine their potential in a rigid box of thinking, for he fails to acknowledge the fact that he limits his thinking to mortality. He never seeks out things of an eternal nature, things of eternal benefit. The Church realizes the value of an earthly education, and puts much emphasis on it, but the Church never turns a blind eye to what eternal progression can be gained in the life to come. Ultimate self-actualization is found on our return back to our Heavenly Father; in his presence we know and testify of all things.

Nietzsche rejects God’s grace in saying that man, being of a fallible nature, can never attain perfection, let alone through spirituality. The True to the Faith booklet best contends this by saying: “As you ponder your progress on the ‘strait and narrow path,’ be assured that eternal life is within your reach. The Lord wants you to return to Him, and He will never require anything of you that you cannot fulfill. All His commandments are calculated to promote your happiness. When you exercise faith and serve Him with all your might, He gives you strength and provides a way for you to do whatever he commands.”

As Christians, we cannot afford to fall prey to the supposed “logic” of Nietzsche’s worldly way of thinking. We are not weak, but immeasurably strong in proportion to our faith in Christ. If we commit to embracing Christ’s teachings of love, service, and eternal progression, we will be more apt to recognize Satan’s deceptions. Through Christ, and by no other way, we find peace, happiness, and ultimately salvation.

I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

This may well be the first Nietzsche-themed sacrament talk ever given. Ha ha.

Browsing through an old CD case, I found some LDS music I haven’t listened to in years—from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to The Best of E.F.Y. soundtracks. There was also some Christian rock albums among the CDs. My favorite Christian bands were Jars of Clay and MercyMe. The latter’s hit single is below. I still think it’s a beautiful song.

In 2002 and 2003, I frequently participated in an online history forum. There I would primarily discuss WWII and, in particular, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (a hero of mine). But occasionally I would proselytize to the other forum members about Mormonism. In a thread about members’ religious affiliations, I wrote the following:

Any Mormons? Come on, the fastest growing religion, and only one member in this forum! I’ll take care of that.

A tad overconfident, no? When a professional historian correctly noted that actually Buddhism and Islam are the fastest growing religions, I was skeptical.

I don’t know their rate of growth, but I have been told a number of times that the Mormon religion is the fastest growing. The church, from 1877, has constructed 114 temples worldwide; 14 more have been announced or under construction. Our population has grown from 6 in 1830 to over 11 million as of today. It has also been said that our membership grows by approximately 750 members a day.

The members were kind enough to humor me with some questions about Mormonism. I took it as an opportunity to inform, but also to preach. I cautioned people against visiting “anti-Mormon sites,” because they confuse Mormons with the Amish and portray Mormons as “militant.” (Mormons seem to revel in people’s misperceptions of their faith.) I instead referred them to LDS.org.

Asked how Mormonism differs from traditional Christianity, I wrote:

One major difference in our church is that we believe in modern day revelation. We follow a Prophet who speaks to God and leads our church. We believe that Jesus Christ is the Savior of all the earth and that he upon his resurrection came to America and established his gospel to the inhabitants of this continent. The Book of Mormon is a historical witness of the relationship between early Native Americans and Jesus Christ. Along with the Bible, it is another Witness of Jesus Christ.

That I could articulate this—the core message of Mormonism—at so young an age demonstrates how effective the LDS Church is at inculcating its teachings into the youth.

This back-and-forth about Mormonism continued for a few more posts. In one, I challenged people to explain “why a 14-year-old would make up his own religion.” Some points of disagreement were left unresolved, so I ended on an ecumenical note. Quoting Bill O’Reilly (whose Fox News show I watched religiously):

“The most important thing I can say about religion is that it’s a good thing for all of us to have. It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe in something.” (The O’Reilly Factor, p. 163)

Another online forum in which I was active around this same time was a Christian prayer board, where people submitted and answered prayer requests. Under the username “LDSWarrior,” I asked that people prayer for me that I may overcome my “homosexual feelings” and other sins.

When a few conservative Christians posted that Islam was a violent and evil religion, I came to its defense:

I think some of you have been too hard on Islam. Any faith in my eyes is a worthy cause to follow if pursued with the right heart. Islam is a peaceful, loving religion for the most part. We can’t generalize Muslims by what we see on TV, extremists like Bin Laden. These aren’t Muslims! Just murderers. Let us remember that all religions have their dark marks in history. Christianity for example had the crusades, a conflict arising out of hate for one’s fellow human beings and causing thousands of lives—a hate that I would never originally think to associate with Christianity. Christ taught us to love one another, and furthermore, for those Muslim extremists, to pray for those who don’t yet see the light of Christ and who may even resent us.

And finally, perhaps the best illustration of my religiosity is what I had plastered to my bedroom wall until early 2007—dozens of LDS and Christian images and sayings, many of which I recently found in a box.

I know that this was a rather long trip down memory lane; thanks for reading. Personal though it was, I hope it was at least amusing. You should have a better idea of why it is that I am so interested in Mormonism, as well. When something plays as big a role in your life as Mormonism did mine, you cannot simply forget it. You live in its shadow for years to come.

Another reason why I shared my experience as a Mormon is because it shows that even the most dyed-in-the-wool believers can change their minds. So don’t be deterred when people tell you that religious debates are ineffectual. Had I never been introduced to contrary opinions, I may still be Mormon (and you wouldn’t be reading this blog).

[The Book of Mormon], depending on where one stands on the Mormon question, was either discovered by the 17-year-old Joseph Smith in upstate New York after the Angel Moroni directed him to golden plates written in reformed Egyptian, or it was the product of a budding confidence man who copied and pasted other pieces of scripture into a totally improbable tale in which ancient Israelites found their way to the New World. Whatever one’s views on the authenticity of the text, it has been widely regarded as a rather inferior work of literature, especially when compared to the King James Bible. “Chloroform in print,” is Mark Twain’s famous dismissal of it.

In Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide, Grant Hardy, who teaches history and religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, begs to differ. He asks his readers to forgo historical questions in favor of literary ones: Let us bracket the issue of what Joseph Smith actually did, he proposes, and instead engage in a careful reading of the text with which, whether as author or as conveyor, Smith is associated. The “narratological structures” Hardy finds in that text, he is convinced, show that Mark Twain did not know what he was talking about.

The Book of Mormon has a complicated structure. It is divided into three major parts: the small plates of Nephi, the words and books of Mormon himself, and the additions and books provided by Moroni. Those who lean toward dismissing the Book of Mormon as the work of a confidence man point to its repetitive nature; the same stories are told over and over again because Smith, for all his wild imagination, was lacking in talent. Hardy offers an alternative interpretation.

Consider, for example, his discussion of those portions of the text purported to be written by Mormon. (Mormon was an American-born descendant of the prophet Lehi, who was among the first to leave Jerusalem for the New World.) Mormon, Hardy reminds us, is in this part of the text an editor assembling the testimony of those who came before him, not an author in his own right. As such, “his task … is to make the hand of God manifest by deftly emphasizing (not creating) patterns that were already present in past events.” Repetition in this context not only helps his readers remember the history that binds them together; it also reminds them of God’s engagement with his people by calling attention to history as the working out of God’s will on earth. We must grasp the purpose the text is trying to serve if we are to understand why it takes the form it does.

Hardy adopts a similar approach to the story in the Book of Mormon most incredible to other Christians: the sudden appearance, in the Third Nephi, of Jesus Christ. The problem there is that the coming of Jesus to the New World is not foreshadowed in other portions of the text. In addition, those few sections of the Third Nephi dealing with this seminal event rely even more than usual on borrowings from the New Testament. All of this makes it possible for skeptics to conclude that Smith had let the story run away from him. Long after he began writing, he suddenly realized the need to insert Jesus into the picture and so simply wedged him in.

Hardy argues otherwise. We should not, he insists, read the Third Nephi as straightforward storytelling; if we do, presumably even if we are Mormons, we will be disappointed. Instead, in these particular passages the narrator, once again Mormon, is neither a historian nor a moralist (as he was in other books) but a prophet. Hardy concedes that the teachings of Jesus in the New World may seem “derivative” but, in his view, Mormon is mediating not only between the different books that compose the Book of Mormon but between Christianity and this new faith founded by Joseph Smith. However awkward it may appear to have an Old World prophet suddenly show up in the New World from a storytelling perspective, it makes perfect sense from a prophetic standpoint. Hardy is really stretching here. Even he acknowledges that the Third Nephi does not address such important theological issues as when Jesus arrived in the New World, whether he was wounded, or how he could promise atonement.

Hardy concludes his book by citing Twain’s famous quip that Wagner’s music “is better than it sounds.” The Book of Mormon, he wants us to believe, is better than it reads. Here is where he loses me. I can get so absorbed in an opera like Siegfried that when it ends, six or so hours after it began, I cannot wait until the next one in the Ring, Die Götterdämmerung, starts. The same thing simply cannot be said about the Book of Mormon, at least to a non-Mormon like me. Hardy’s heroic efforts to prove that there is literature somewhere buried in all those passages starting with “Behold” or “And so it came to pass” leave me, like Twain, gasping for air. Hardy does convince me that writing the Book of Mormon required an amazing amount of dedication. How else to explain its length and the fervent imagination clearly at work within it. He has not convinced me that what was written qualifies as great, or even good.

Mormonism’s success suggests that a religion can flourish in spite of rather than because of its founding texts. I do not doubt that Mormons are inspired by the words associated with Joseph Smith. But if another reference to music is permitted, I simply cannot imagine anyone setting those words to music the way Handel did with the Bible in his oratorios. The Book of Mormon has a structure. It does not sing.

This is a sorely inadequate discussion of the Book of Mormon‘s literary merit, I know. But it raises an interesting question to which we might do greater justice: Is the Book of Mormon complex or compelling as a work of literature?

I’m torn. One hand, I’m inclined to agree with Mark Twain’s assessment—that it’s a pretty dull and repetitive read. At the very least, the Book of Mormon doesn’t have the poetic prowess of the Qur’an or the KJV Bible it imitates. But on the other hand, I cannot help but be impressed by Joseph Smith’s dictating it with his face in a hat.

Where do you come down on this issue?

This paper explores what Mormons believe about the Book of Mormon and its historicity, and the implications those beliefs have—primarily for Latin and Native American members of the LDS Church. I conducted a 10-question survey of 115 Mormons. My survey yielded several findings, including the following: most Mormons understand the Book of Mormon to be an actual history of and by ancient American peoples; racial beliefs about Book of Mormon peoples and their supposed descendants remain pervasive among some Mormons; and Hispanic members are more sensitive to issues of racism within the LDS Church.

I have been meaning to publish my research, but it isn’t easy distilling an entire thesis paper into a blog post. So I have instead just uploaded the paper as a .doc file on here.

Book of Mormon paper

If you’d prefer not to read a 29-page paper, you can download this PowerPoint presentation.

Book of Mormon presentation

Any feedback is appreciated, but please be forgiving in your assessment. Despite having all semester to work on my thesis, I—in typical Jon fashion—procrastinated and the quality of the paper and presentation suffered for it. Still, I hope you find my research interesting.

The above video is a clip from Elder Holland’s spirited talk on the Book of Mormon that he gave at LDS General Conference last October.

Several Mormons on Facebook organized “The Book of Mormon/YouTube Challenge” to give this video increased exposure and hopefully propel it to YouTube’s homepage. Atheist blogger PZ Myers got wind of this event, and urged his readers to do the following by way of response: view the video (once), “dislike” it, and leave a respectful rebuttal of Elder Holland’s argument in the comments.

Nobody should flag the video or try to restrict Mormons’ First Amendment right to promote it. I much prefer PZ Myers suggested response—that we take this event as an opportunity to explain to Mormons why Elder Holland’s logic fails.