Railway to Heaven

I have struggled for some time now over the LDS Church.  Since it is/was the primary church of the Restoration, I have some bittersweet feelings about it.  I had more of an association with it during my childhood, and it was quite different then.  I often wonder what all of its members will do when the tribulations commence, and they discover that their leaders have been quite fallible.

You often meet people who have given up on organized religion.  Often it is because the parish priest was a jerk or he molested the little girl down the street.  Sometimes it is because the church solicits money, and doesn't necessarily give much in return.  One problem with organized religion is that the organizers thereof are men, and men are often greedy, lecherous and vicious.  I met a guy once whose landlady was asked to evict him and his family by a bishop who had discovered that the guy was a polygamist.  Big corporate religions often have fangs and will brutalize anyone who stands in their way or who voices dissent.

What makes me the most nervous about the Mormon Church now is the self-preservation-at-all-costs approach.  In the early days, the Church bore revolutionary doctrines to the world.  Joseph Smith seemed to many to be a lunatic.  His polygamy must have contributed to his assassination.  He preached utopia, blood atonement, sanctification and a pre-existence.  He produced an ancient book of scripture.  He changed the world.

Nowadays the Church teaches people to build families, to be good, honest and chaste, and not to drink coffee.  It teaches people to embrace all races and creeds (except Fundamentalist Mormons).  It sends 80,000 missionaries into the world to spread the same message - a message that THIS is the church of the restoration, and that 75% of the original doctrines of that restoration were a mistake on the part of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.  Don't let that worry you - those old, obscure, mysterious doctrines were a fleeting aberration, a product of colonial times when men were barbaric.  It teaches the Taiwanese, the Argentines and the Finns to build Zion in their own homelands - to board a train that is going straight to the Celestial Kingdom.

Yes, get baptized, pay your tithing, answer the temple recommend interview questions the right way, get a mortgage and a three-bedroom, two-bath house, send your kids on missions and train them to marry only in the temple, and follow "the Prophet" at all costs and you will go directly to the Celestial Kingdom.

I read an article once that imagined the words of a Soviet-era Russian official.  He insisted that the Soviet Union erred in banishing all religions.  The Soviet Union should have welcomed the Mormon Church - after all, it taught its members to be unquestioningly obedient; to trust in the organization and not so much in God; to turn over their goods to the collective without question; to shun and tattle on defectors in their midst; to scramble for position and favor among the leading elite.  Yes, the Mormon Church fits well in a totalitarian environment.

The Church wants you to think that membership in it is a virtual guarantee of divine glory.  Jump aboard this train and you are on your way.  Stay on this railway to heaven at any cost and you will become a god, despite whatever may happen to others on the outside.  You will be given seven hot wives in the hereafter, so keep your mouth shut, pay your tithing, and comply with everything you are instructed, and all will be well in Zion.

Look out!

Get Your Story Straight!

I am pasting the entire text of this Salt Lake Tribune article below, so that you can fathom for yourself what makes sense.  I have also highlighted the link to the LDS Church's recent announcement.

What I find interesting is the strategy.  The Church has faced immense criticism for its prior ban on ordaining blacks.  The current position must inevitably be that the ban was wrong and not directed by God.  Choosing to repudiate its earlier doctrine, the Church must blame somebody - Joseph Smith or someone else.  Joseph Smith followed the teachings of the Old Testament which indisputably forbade blacks to hold priesthood or enter the temples, but once the Church pulls the rug out from under its polygamous founder, the Book of Mormon will doubtless be the next thing to go.

So, for now the Church is indicting polygamist, pioneer and governor, Brigham Young, asserting that he was imperfect and misguided (along with all of his successors through Harold B. Lee).  Denouncing a vast body of its own theological underpinnings, I suppose the Church must now rename itself - "The Community of Christ", or "The Church of Latter-day Lemmings", and rename BYU: "Thomas S. Monson University".

Let me tell you what, I believe, is the pathetic fallacy of this latest step.  Brigham Young was not perfect.  Jesus was/is perfect.  Nevertheless, Brigham Young did a great job of preserving and growing the Church.  Without Brigham Young, Salt Lake City and the modern Church would not exist.  This new message says, 

"People, don't put any faith in anything Brigham Young said.  He was a kook - - polygamy, Adam-God, blood atonement, denying the priesthood to blacks, preaching against miscegenation, etc., etc. !!  Put your trust in the modern, current leaders and in the doctrinal revisions they make.  The members of the Church in Brigham Young's day were sorely misguided.  They saw him as a 'prophet', and a prophet he wasn't.  Contrastingly, you modern-day members are utterly safe.  Just follow the utterances of the Kimballs, Hinckleys and Monsons, and you will go straight to the Celestial Kingdom.  Thomas S. Monson is a more legitimate prophet than Brigham Young [even though he has never claimed or published a single revelation]."

 Renn.

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Mormon church traces black priesthood ban to Brigham Young

Religion • Black LDS praise the move; historian calls it another step in the “maturation” of the Utah-based faith.

By peggy fletcher Stack

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: December 10, 2013 09:39AM

In the past, the LDS Church has said history isn’t clear on why blacks were banned from its all-male priesthood for more than a century.

Apparently, it now is.

The reason, according to a newly released explanation from the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is rooted more in racism than revelation.

“Race and the Priesthood,” posted Friday on the church’s website, lds.org, also jettisons any beliefs developed through the years to defend the prohibition. And those findings are drawing praise from black Mormons and historians.

“Hallelujah,” says Catherine Stokes, a black Mormon who joined the LDS Church in Chicago and now lives in Utah. “I view this as a Christmas gift to each and every member of the church — black, white or whatever ethnicity.”

The ban began under Brigham Young, second LDS president, who was influenced by common beliefs of the time, reports the article. It did not exist during the tenure of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, who opposed slavery and personally ordained several African-Americans.

The essay is part of an ongoing series of “gospel topics pages” published by the LDS Church to give Mormons resources for understanding complex issues such as whether Mormons are Christians and differing, sometimes-contradictory accounts of Smith’s early visionary experiences.

The church-produced article on race argues that “there is no evidence that any black men were denied the priesthood during Joseph Smith’s lifetime.”

But the record clearly shows that, in 1852, Young — Smith’s immediate successor — “publicly announced that men of black African descent could no longer be ordained to the priesthood, though thereafter blacks continued to join the church.”

More than 125 years later, in 1978, the LDS Church, under then-President Spencer W. Kimball, lifted the ban, but some Mormons have continued to promote theories used to defend the former exclusion — “that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else.”

The new statement says the LDS Church “disavows the theories advanced in the past ... [and that ] church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.”

Margaret Young, who teaches English at LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University, believes all Mormons should carry a copy of the statement with them.

“Make three-by-five cards of Friday’s church statement on race. Edit carefully if you need to. Laminate it, and keep it handy —in a purse or wallet,” Young, who co-produced a documentary on blacks in the church, wrote to her Facebook friends. “We are now empowered to answer folks who perpetuate old justifications for the priesthood restriction in ways they won’t argue with. We are the messengers to give wings to the statement.”

What is most important about the statement on race to Mormon historian Richard Bushman is its perspective.

“It is written as a historian might tell the story,” Bushman says from his home in New York, “not as a theological piece, trying to justify the practice.”

By depicting the exclusion as fitting with the common practices of the day, says Bushman, who wrote “Rough Stone Rolling,” a critically acclaimed biography of Smith, “it drains the ban of revelatory significance, makes it something that just grew up and, in time, had to be eliminated.”

But accepting that, Bushman says, “requires a deep reorientation of Mormon thinking.”

Mormons believe that their leaders are in regular communication with God, so if you say Young could make a serious error, he says, “it brings into question all of the prophet’s inspiration.”

Members need to recognize that God can “work through imperfect instruments,” Bushman says. “For many Latter-day Saints, that is going to be a difficult transition. But it is part of our maturation as a church.”

Some top Mormon leaders are already pushing in that direction.

“And, to be perfectly frank, there have been times when members or leaders in the church have simply made mistakes. There may have been things said or done that were not in harmony with our values, principles or doctrine,” Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the faith’s governing First Presidency, said in October’s LDS General Conference. “I suppose the church would be perfect only if it were run by perfect beings. God is perfect, and his doctrine is pure. But he works through us — his imperfect children — and imperfect people make mistakes.”

While Mormons applaud the statement on race, some believe the church needs to go much further. Some want an apology; some just want wider awareness.

“The disavowal says to the church and to the world, ‘Everything we taught you justifying the restriction is wrong,’ ” says Marvin Perkins, a Los Angeles-based Mormon co-author of the DVD series, “Blacks in the Scriptures.” “But what would be ideal would be for every member to be as well-versed regarding the truths of the priesthood ban and scriptural truths regarding skin color and curses as they are with the Joseph Smith story and the First Vision. We need it repeated over and over in church curriculum in manuals and over the pulpit. That’s the way this will be resolved.”

Stokes, though, believes this latest step is worth celebrating.

Indeed, the website states, “in theology and practice, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints embraces the universal human family. Latter-day Saint scripture and teachings affirm that God loves all of his children and makes salvation available to all.”

This essay, Stokes says, “should enable people to move forward in concert with the second great commandment to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

After all, she says, echoing Mormon scripture, “all are alike unto God.”

pstack@sltrib.com

Contradictions

You've all seen this sign, or one of the thousands like it.  The ecumenism of the Mormon Church is legendary.  Fifty thousand clean-cut missionaries are trotting the globe petulantly hoping to get you to the chapel.

Anybody and everybody is welcome.  Visitors become investigators, investigators become converts, and converts become members.  Members become tithe-payers, and tithe-payers pay for the fancy granite signs like this one boldly placed in front of your local LDS chapel.

I have some friends up in Utah who epitomize the perfect Mormon plural family.  The guy is a humble, hard-working husband.  He has two beautiful wives and a bundle of cute little kids.  He minds his own business and is loved by everyone who knows him.

Recently he shared with me a rather remarkable experience he had.  He moved into a Wasatch Front suburb a few years ago, and encountered some members of the local LDS ward.  He politely explained to them that he had two wives, and that he didn't want to cause a stir in the neighborhood.  They would keep largely to themselves and be respectful of the neighbor folks.

The ward members were taken aback by this revelation, but decided that such reticence was ill-placed.  They told my friend that he should not feel unwelcome and should certainly not hesitate to attend the ward's Sunday sacrament services (see the picture above).  He said, "Well, won't it be a little bit awkward  - me sitting there with the ladies on either side of me?  I don't want to make people feel uncomfortable."  "Silly," they pressed, "please come, we would love to have you!"

This humble, uncynical friend of mine decided to take them up on the invitation.  The next Sunday, husband, wife, wife, and toddlers all showed up for sacrament meeting.  When they got to the chapel, the ushers shepherded them to the front pews that had been deliberately vacated to make room for them.  Wow !!!!!!!  Such unprecedented glasnost. !!!

More remarkable still - the trio felt so welcomed, they came back to church again and again, and not just for several Sundays.  For TWO LONG YEARS this sweet family attended church faithfully, mingling and participating and sharing the fellowship and goodwill of people who embrace the restored Gospel.

The two ladies were so well received and respected by the ward members that they were eventually asked if they would accept some assignments and callings in the ward.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPPPSSSSSSSSSS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I guess that upset the applecart.  As you can expect, word of this development wafted up into the nostrils of the dark blue suits at 50 E. North Temple, and the fat hit the shin.  The edict came down.  But wait, there's more. Not only did the General Authorities override the local leaders regarding giving Church callings to polygamists (of course), but they actually told them to ask this beloved family of longtime visitors that they were NOT ALLOWED TO COME TO SUNDAY CHURCH MEETINGS ANY MORE.

That was the end of my friends' attendance at Mormon Church meetings.  What can you say?

VISITORS WELCOME

Wizard of Oz

I have never watched the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz" from start to finish.  What I did see though, was, I think, a clever metaphor for an interesting aspect of humanity.  We do not want to be disappointed by our heroes, our clerics or our government.  Who would have thought that Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Bakker, Bill Clinton and Tiger Woods were committing adultery?  Who, among the Mormon faithful, would want to discover that the beloved 'prophet', Thomas Monson, has not had any revelations or prophecies?

Still, we press on gullibly.  I was reading yesterday about the three huge bombs found in the Oklahoma City federal building on the day that it was blown up.  Local news reports made no mention of a Ryder truck.  A federal government representative at the time commented that people simply need to have more faith and trust in the integrity of the federal government.

On 9/11/01, the WTC twin towers crashed to the ground.  At some distance away, WTC Building 7 remained largely unscathed, except for having been pelted with some flying, burning debris.  The owner decided, however, that this minor damage to the building warranted its immediate demolition, and called for the building to be "pulled" (code for planned demolition). So, a few hours after buildings 1 and 2 mysteriously imploded, Building 7 collapsed neatly into its own footprint.  Even more bizarre is the fact that a British reporter announced that the building had collapsed 20 minutes before it really did.  If you are not hopelessly gullible, you must already understand that WTC Building 7 could not have imploded without someone having gone in there days earlier and placed demolition explosives. 

I saw a newsflash yesterday announcing that the Japanese government is issuing a stimulus.  If all of the Western nations are over-extended with borrowing, who is lending them money? - - Cuba, North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, Germany?  The U.S. just hit the $16 Trillion debt mark, and recent articles report that China's debts rival U.S. debt, so who is lending all this money to these huge nations, and, if those nations don't pay up, how will that "WHO" collect on the delinquencies?

Come on! We both know that if you tally up the debt/credit balances of all the borrower nations, they don't add up to zero $$.  The people lending to the countries are not the countries - it is private bankers - private bankers who lend to corporations AND to governments.  When those banker families lend those governments as much money as there is in circulation in the entire nation, then there are no more shekels left with which to pay the INTEREST !!!!!  Then what?  You know what !!!!

They print more paper money.  Last week Bernanke announced QE3.  What is that?  QE3 (Quantitative Easing) is the third instance (in recent history) of the Federal Reserve (a private bank) printing BILLIONS of funny-money notes.  QE3 will involve the Fed buying $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities each month.  Counterfeiting would be a better description.  When you expand the supply of paper money, its value shrinks, you get SCREWED, and gas and food prices rise.  Just you watch !!

Once again, I ask you - WHY do not the borrower nations (who are doomed to never be able to pay back their gargantuan debts) rise up and repudiate the banker families who have swindled them/us?

Because they are in on the scam, silly!

Nero fiddled while Rome burned.  Will Obama or Romney be the Fiddler on the roof this time around?  (And will the Wizard of Oz salvage us?)

Renn sings the Blues

I was pleased to find a well-reasoned counterpoint to the assertions I have made in some of my posts. The author is a certain TXBluesMan. I can tell he is a smart guy. He is vigorous in his defense of the Reynolds decision. I wonder if he would be equally defensive of Davis v. Beason. He makes some intelligent points about Utah's conviction of Warren Jeffs, insisting that the legal reasoning behind the prosecution's "rape-as-an-accomplice" strategy was based in sound statutory language. If he is right, then Jeffs' appeal will not succeed. I still think that the vigorously anti-FLDS prosecution team had to get very creative in concocting an unprecedented, contorted line of reasoning to achieve a conviction, in concert with a globally-tainted jury pool (not unlike the bizarre statute-of-limitations logic used in the Tom Green conviction).

I believe TXBluesMan has done his homework. I believe he genuinely dislikes the practice of polygamy and the Fundamentalist Mormon communities. I honor every American's right to find that lifestyle repugnant, just as I cherish my right to practice it. TXBluesMan insists that we "change the law" and then reassures us that we stand no chance of getting the SCOTUS to overturn Reynolds. I believe that Lawrence v. Texas (June 26, 2003) DID effectively overturn Reynolds. Reynolds says that you can believe what you want, but that the State can step in if what you are doing under the guise of religion (like drinking hallucinogenic tea in a religious ceremony) goes against the State's wishes. TXBluesMan is therefore utterly content that the State of Utah condones promiscuous polygamous copulation among tens of thousands of Utah citizens, but criminalizes such conduct when - a) it is not promiscuous, and b) the actors believe in the theologies of Mormonism.

TXBluesMan, Mark Shurtleff, Thomas S. Monson, many Utahns and probably millions of Latter-day Saints ostensibly DREAD the prospect of a test case making its way to the Supreme Court to invoke Lawrence v. Texas (and Lukumi), to overturn Reynolds and to decriminalize consensual adult, non-legal, cohabitational polyga-bigamy - which is exactly why Utah law-enforcement officials INDIGNANTLY refrain from prosecuting the tens of thousands of polygamists openly walking the streets.

In some ways, I think this whole situation is a bit silly. Utah has laws against public profanity, but Lord Jerry Sloan (UTAH JAZZ coach) gets a waiver.

Alabama has a law against shooting an animal from a moving vehicle (unless it is a whale). STUPID LAWS ARE STUPID LAWS. I know it, and TXBluesMan knows it. He just wants to take an extremely contrary position, because he harbors a deep dislike of our culture and lifestyle. I will fight to the death to defend his right to believe that way, and I am copying his review of my blog below. (Renn)
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Saturday, February 28, 2009
The Fall of Reynolds? Not Hardly...

There is a new blogger out there using the name Renn Oldsbuster and the blog is named The Fall of Reynolds, an apparent reference to Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878). Many of the pro-FLDS types are going ga-ga over his posts, primarily because he agrees with them. It is certainly not because he has a good grasp of the law...

Lets take a look at some of his posts. We'll start with Warren Jeffs - Innocent? In this post, he is under the mistaken impression that accomplice means something other than what the legal definition is. He states:

However, you and I both know that an "accomplice to rape" has to be proximally involved in the rape act - either by physically holding the victim down, or by barring the door so as to prevent his or her escape.

Uh, Renn? That is not exactly the case. Utah Code Ann. Sec. 76-2-202 states:

Every person, acting with the mental state required for the commission of an offense who directly commits the offense, who solicits, requests, commands, encourages, or intentionally aids another person to engage in conduct which constitutes an offense shall be criminally liable as a party for such conduct.

That's what constitutes an accomplice. In State v. Biggs, 197 P.3d 628 (Utah 2008), the Utah Supreme Court stated (at pp. 631-632):

"To show that a defendant is guilty under accomplice liability, the State must show that an individual acted with both the intent that the underlying offense be committed and the intent to aid the principal actor in the offense."

So then we must look at the Utah Rape statute (Utah Code Ann. Sec. 76-5-402). It states that "A person commits rape when the actor has sexual intercourse with another person without the victim's consent." OK, let's look at consent, defined under Utah Code Ann. Sec. 76-5-406, remembering that the victim was 14 years old at the time of the so-called marriage.

An act of ... rape ... is without consent of the victim under any of the following circumstances: ... the actor knows that the victim submits or participates because the victim erroneously believes that the actor is the victim's spouse...

OK, in Nevada, where Jeffs performed the sealing, there is no common-law marriage, you must have a license (which they did not have). To obtain a license for someone under the age of 16, you must have a court order (which they did not have). Since they were not legally married, but the victim "erroneously" believed that they were, that is enough to prove the crime of rape in Utah. In addition, Jeffs actively encouraged that belief, both in performing the sealing and that she was to give herself to her so-called husband "mind, body and soul."

There is clearly sufficient evidence for the 12 jurors to find Jeffs guilty. In addition, despite some people's contrary views, if Steed is acquitted as the principle in the rape charge, that doesn't do anything for Jeffs on appeal - see Standifer v. United States, 447 U.S. 10 (1980) which stated (at p. 20) that "all participants in conduct violating a federal criminal statute are "principals." As such, they are punishable for their criminal conduct; the fate of other participants is irrelevant." Utah law is no different.

Obviously Oldsbuster doesn't see it that way, but as a long term associate of convicted polygamist Tom Green ("I know Tom Green pretty well...") I would tend to think that he might be a little biased...

As to his main thrust, the Fall of Reynolds, he seeks to explain his position on why Reynolds is not good case law. First, he misstates the background of the SCOTUS decision by Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite as being "summarily" decided. This is clearly a position that is out of touch with reality and the history of the case.

For one thing, polygamy laws were merely one of the weapons that the Federal Government was going to use to bring a treasonable population under Federal authority. One must remember that Brigham Young and 65 other prominent Mormons were indicted for Treason in 1857-58, and only the Mormon capitulation prevented their later arrest and trial, with President Buchanan pardoning the indicted Mormons. This had been a consistent thorn in the side of the Federal government, with the treason case in 1838 failing due to the defendants fleeing the jurisdiction, the 1844 case failing with the death of Joseph Smith prior to prosecution, and the 1858 case ending in a settlement. In 1870, eight "Nauvoo Legion" officers were arrested for treason. Up to the trial of George Reynolds for bigamy/polygamy, the Mormons had opposed the role of the Federal government in almost every aspect. One of the Mormon bishops had gone as far to tell a San Francisco newspaper that "Utah will be admitted as a polygamous State, and the other Territories that we have peacefully subjugated will be admitted also. We will then hold the balance of power, and will dictate to the country." (see Sarah B. Gordon, The Mormon Question, 2002). The Feds didn't much care for this for obvious reasons, especially the fact that both Smith and Young had stated that they were "a king." (Smith in 1844, Young in 1870)

Much like the way the Federal government later used the RICO statute against the Mafia, they used the polygamy laws against the semi-rebellious Mormons. What came of this as far as Constitutional law came from another source.

Justice Waite was well known for his scholarly research, and it was this that turned the initial vote from 5-4 to a 9-0 per curiam decision. Waite had contacted the most prominent historian of the day, Dr. George Bancroft (and author of History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States of America). One of the key points that Waite noted was that within one year of Virginia passing their religious freedom bill on which the Free Exercise Clause is based is that the Legislature passed the Anti-Polygamy Statute of King James I, and in which polygamy was defined as a capital offense.

Justice Waite, taking to heart the writings of the Founding Fathers and the key issue of the Free Exercise Clause, put it perfectly in his opinion, when he stated (Reynolds, at p. 165):

"Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices."

Remember, when he began writing the opinion, he only had 5 of the 9 justices voting to affirm. Once they saw the outstanding job that he did, it became a unanimous decision.

Next, Oldsbuster states that there was "really no juridical [sic] briefing" which is flat out false. George W. Biddle (Reynolds attorney) submitted a 63 page brief, outlining a strong argument for overturning the conviction on First Amendment grounds. The government brief was 8 pages.

Finally, the court has shown no indication that it will back down from this position. In every single case attacking bigamy or polygamy statutes on Free Exercise grounds, exactly zero have succeeded...
 
Posted by TxBluesMan at 8:01 AM