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About This "Mormonism" Thing
By Ernest Partridge (about the author) Page 1 of 3 page(s)
For OpEdNews: Ernest Partridge - Writer
I suspect that by now those leaders may be having some second thoughts.
For while it was a good thing for the American public to learn about the Mormon faith, Church leaders are now discovering that it is possible to have too much of a good thing.
The thirteen Articles of Faith of the Mormon religion enumerate a set of beliefs, some of which are quite consistent with traditional Christianity, and others which, while unique to Mormonism (e.g., the Book of Mormon), are not outlandish or immediately offensive to most ordinary Christians. (The Articles of Faith were written by the Mormon founder, Joseph Smith, to a Chicago publisher, John Wentworth, in 1842). The Articles say nothing about God once being a mortal human and being one among many Gods, about the brotherhood of Jesus and Satan, about God inhabiting a planet called "Kolob," or about the "magic underwear" that devout Mormons are required to wear, etc. Nor are you likely to hear about such things from the Mormon missionaries that might appear at your front door.
However, it now seems naive to have supposed that these and other bizarre Mormon doctrines would not be brought to light by Mitt Romney's political rivals.
Many faithful Mormons are surprised at the astonishment and derision that some LDS beliefs provoke among the general public. This surprise is likely due to the simple and universal fact that beliefs that are taught in childhood and shared in a community of believers are regarded by the faithful as "obvious" and "ordinary," while at the same time those same beliefs are considered, "from the outside," to be weird and outlandish.
I can testify to this fact, for I have experienced Mormon doctrine from both the inside and the outside. From childhood, through high school, I shared Mitt Romney's faith in the Mormon religion. Then that faith totally vanished during my freshman year in college at Brigham Young University, of all places!
MORMONISM AND ME
If I might be permitted a few autobiographical remarks, this is how it happened.
My high school education was outstanding. I was among a few students selected to attend a "demonstration" school attached to a state teachers' college, where we were taught by college professors. There I acquired a precociously secular, scientific, and scholarly perspective on human history and institutions. At the same time, my parents (both graduates of BYU and both post-graduates of Columbia University) saw to it that my two brothers and I regularly attended LDS Sunday services. They accepted the conventional view that "Sunday School" was essential to a child's moral development a view that I have since come to seriously doubt.
Accordingly, during my adolescence, I carried about in my head, a bifurcated mind. There was "the weekday mind" of ancient dinosaurs, of evolution, of American Indians as migrants from Asia, and above all, of skepticism, scientific discipline and critical thought. Then there was "the Sunday mind" of the Creation in 4004 BC, of the Garden of Eden and Noah's flood, of the Indians as migrant Israelites (the "Lamanites"), and of faith trumping "man's reason" faith: "the substance of things hoped-for, the evidence of things not seen." (Hebrews, 11:1). I somehow managed the alternation of mind-sets from weekdays to weekends to weekdays again, without undue strain.
But at BYU the shifting of mind-sets from classroom to classroom to library to study hall proved to be untenable. At the end of my sophomore year, I transferred to the University of Utah and majored in Philosophy. Courses in geology, anthropology, new-world archeology, etc., pounded the final nails into the coffin of my childhood faith. In the words of the apostle, Paul: "when I was a child, ... I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things." (I Corinthians, 13:11) In my mind, the Latter-Day Saints, formerly "us," became "them," and since then I have never looked back. (Accounts of this "de-conversion" may be found in my unpublished "A Peculiar People" and "Religion and the Schools: A Dialog").
Today, the polygamous man-God of Kolob, the magic underwear, the Hebrew-Indians, the translating peep-stones and the golden plates, the farm boy and the angel, "the curse of Cain" upon all people with any African ancestors, baptism for the dead (the Creator of the earth and all human souls being incapable of saving those souls all by himself), etc. all this and more seem as bizarre to me as they do to most non-Mormons. (The essential tenets of Mormon theology are presented in this remarkable cartoon narrative of unknown origin. It is generally accurate, although there are a few identifiable minor errors. For example, Mormons do not believe that God and Mrs. God came to earth as Adam and Eve).
But equally bizarre to me is the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation (the ritual cannibalism of God's body), the argument that birth control is contrary to "natural law," the protestant fundamentalist beliefs in biblical literalism, young-earth creationism, and the doctrine of "the rapture," the orthodox Jewish ban against eating shellfish or wearing mixed fabrics, and the Islamic belief that the Angel Gabriel handed the Koran to Mohammed. Much worse is the plain immorality of many traditional religious beliefs. These include the belief that the genocide, murder and mayhem chronicled in the Old Testament were condoned and even commanded by the Lord God, that God had ordered that disobedient children, blasphemers, unchaste young women (but not men), and those who toil on the Sabbath be put to death, and that a loving God created billions of souls, all but a few thousand of whom He has condemned and will condemn to eternal damnation and torment. Among those condemned are authentic "secular" saints and martyrs such as Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Galileo, Voltaire, Gandhi, Jefferson, Sakharov, who somehow failed in their lifetimes to agree with Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior.
A "RELIGIOUS TEST" FOR PUBLIC OFFICE?
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