Saintly Departure
Just finished reading Leaving the Saintsby Martha Beck. She is the daughter of one of the greatest apologists in the LDS (Latter Day Saints--Mormons) Church. In the book she recounts the story of being sexually abused by her father, her life long struggle to come to grips with her own spiritual journey, and eventually leaving the Mormon Church. It is a really powerful read in many ways--touching and humorous at times, deeply disturbing in others.
Her story, prima facie, seems grounded, although it is entirely possible that she has either invented the thing for publicity or is simply being honest about memories she has that may in fact not be historically-based.
Beck has a very strong spiritual life, and recounts numerous spiritual experiences common throughout the spiritual legacy of the human race, especially of the subtle-soul level nature. She is a great example of a modernist spiritual seeker. A sociologist by training, she explicitly discusses her theory that mystics are scientists of the soul. She studies all the spiritual traditions of the world and begins to practice. She seeks evidence and undertakes spiritual practice like an experiment. Her empiricism, is best described as "experientialism". She follows in the footsteps of great spiritual experientialists like William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience), Aldous Huxley (Doors of Perception), and the like.
She shows in other words that as Wilber has pointed out, it is not modern epistemology that has destroyed spiritual practice and religious belief, it is postmodernism, especially Continental European philosophy. Postmodernism is based on the notion that all truth is context-dependent and socially co-constructed. The contemplative path, experientially understood, typically involves a solitary quest that seeks to experience transcendent, sometimes seemingly non-embodied states of consciousnses and realization.
As a totally unscientific proof of Wilber's thesis that postmodernism (not modernism) is the real negater of contemplative spiritual worldview, I would point to my year of philosopy studies at Fordham U., part of my training to be a Jesuit priest. Fordham is probably (along with maybe Villanova, also Catholic by the way--European, Catholic, shouldn't be a surprise) the strongest philosophy department in the US devoted to Continental postmodern currents of thought. North American, especially US departments, are so analytical, logically postivistic, lingustically, and pragmatically oriented, that the European tradition is relegated to a minor staus. The point being the graduate students in the program, wonderful people mind you, were by and large, influenced as they were by postmodern constructivist currents, that religion was simply a social force or lubricant. It wasn't outright atheism, at least not combatively so (that would be too modernist see), it was more just neglect, irony, and indifference. A much tougher nut to crack.
But in essence they were right. None of the great traditions have managed to answer the terms of postmodernism.
Beck does often mention her Mormon cultural upbringing but it is never really tied more profoundly, I think, to her religious quest. It has at times given her wise insights, at other times violated her inner sanctity, but ultimately the balance lies in her own individual choice as to what to keep, what to forgive, and what to jettison. She promotes a more spiritual libertarian point of view, I would say, with each individual best able to choose for him/herself their own spiritual path (including her children).
She also delves into some telling issues relating to Mormon theology. I'm not some world expert on Mormonism, but the basic facts are fairly well known. Mormonism--which is for many reasons not the preferred term but it is the one most people recognize--began with Joseph Smith, a 19th cenutry American. He claimed to have received a vision from the angel Gabriel (who also it is reputed came to Mary announcing the virgin birth and Muhammad commanding him to recite the Qu'ran). Smith is said to have been directed by the angel to a series of stones on which were recorded The Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is considered a third testament--Old, New, and Mormon--superseding the prior two which, though not incorrect, had been corrupted by Jews and so-called Christians (again like Muhammad).
There are actually multiple groups within the so-called Mormon family, the largest and most famous being The Latter Day Saints. The LDS are part of a larger movement of Christian-like groups known as Restoratiionists. The Restorationists Churches include Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, among others. Restorationists, as the name implies, seek a Restoration. What was "lost" they feel was the Faith, from early on. According to these different creeds, the Church (meaning the Catholic-Orthodox Church) feel into what they call the Great Apostasy--a Church-wide total loss of the true-faith. This occurred by different calculatinos somewhere around 100 A.D.
So for 1700+ years between 100 AD and the mid 1800s when Smith received his vision, there was no true Church, no true believers, and no true prophets on earth. Smith was the new prophet to "restore" the true faith.
Smith apparently, so goes the story, translated the tablets by placing his head in his hat (to induce a darkened visual field no doubt) and then emerging having conversed with the angel and completed the work--note: many official Mormon accounts doubt this version of events.
Either way, Smith translated these "texts" or so he claimed. Smith was known to have practiced traditional diviniation techniques with his father and most likely had ties to Masonic thought. [That connection might explain Mormon practice of secretive rituals involving special handshakes and the like].
The Book of Mormon reports to tell the story of a group of Israelites who flee the Holy Land prior to the fall of the Southern Kingdom in 600 BC only to arrive in the New World. These ancient Israelites become the basis for the Native American Tribes of the Americas. After the Resurrection Jesus comes to visit these long lost "Jews" and tell the great news--this event is not recorded in the Bible, only the Book of Mormon, for those wondering how you missed out on that story in Bible School. The two "tribes" of the Jews of the New World eventually begin to fight one another and Mormon and his son Moroni are the last prophets of this tribe. Moroni writes the tablets in an ancient Semitic script prior to his death and the total annihilation of his tribe, to record the events for future generations.
Mormon theology holds many beliefs that put it at odds with traditional forms of Christianity--Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and mainline Protestant. For example:
1. The existence of a Third Testament that supersedes the New Testament
2. Non-Trinitarian Theology. This is probably the biggest. Mormons, unlike all traditional Nicene Christians, do not believe in a Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit as One God). There is only one Creator and Jesus is his son, in an almost literal sense. They are separate nontheless. Again, with its strict monotheism, not the relation to Islam.
3. The Leader of the LDS is considered to be a Living Prophet (from Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, down the line to today's prophet Gordon Hinckley.
4. Reference to a Divine Feminine, co-equal (?) with the Creator. A Divine Mother Figure, not much spoken about.
5. The teaching of exaltation. Very unique to Mormon theology-spirituality. Exaltation is the belief that upon death, those Mormons (and only Mormons are able to receive this privilege) who are especially sanctified--and male, and most likely married to multiple women--will become gods. No problem here, this is the basic teaching of deification. Here's the twist though. They will become creators of other worlds, in other universes it seems. THEREFORE
6. The Creator-God our universe was a man on another planet in some other lifetime. God, is not, therefore, as in traditional monotheism (Jewish, Christian, or Muslim) a transcendent unconditional Spirit, no bound by time-space, incorporeal in nature.
7. Only Mormon baptism will bring one to the heavenly realms. Mormons can and do, consequently, perform baptismal services in the name of the dead. Every wonder why Mormons are so interested and helpful when it comes to genealogies? Thought it was just down-home curiosity? Think again sucker. There is no mainline Christian equivalent. You can not baptize someone, in Christianity, without them being present bodily and alive.
What is probably the most interesting facet of Mormon theology and revelation is that it is a mythic level narrative that arose in the modern rationalistic post-mythic world. In other words its mythic faith claims can actually be tested. As opposed to every other great world religion--where is the proof or disproof that Krishna ran with all the milkmaidens, that Jesus of Nazareth rose out of a grave, that Muhammad did perfectly recite the angelic voice, that those tablets Moses got up on the mountain were inscribed by God's finger, or that the Buddha was born out the side of his mother's womb?
Mormonism exists then in the no-mans-land between the mythic (blue meme) and the rational (orange meme). Mormonism, mythically, tries to connect the Biblical Abrahamic tradition with the American notion of Manifest Destiny. Remember the American revolution was instigated by some self-serving yet truly visionary group of East Coast Deists and Masons. But that vision would never totally seep into the otherwise very religious culture, especially that growing in the Westernly expanding US. I discussed in an earlier post (The Two Truths of Christianity) the relevance of the First and Second Great Awakenings--particularly the Second--in terms of inculcating the American vision into the less educated, more religious-traditional masses. Mormonism is definitely part of that trend in 19th century America--prior the large scale immigration of Europeans and Asians in the later half of the 19th century.
Mormonism is the most explicit in its linking of the Abrahamic narrative with the American vision, which explains why Mormons have typically been so patriotic, have even been recruited (specifically) by the CIA.
[Aside George W. Bush could be viewed then as the first president to explicitly play the card of uniting the power-consitutional authorities of the Deists with the Biblical faith of the masses. Most presidents have been Baptists who seek to strongly separate the two, and while most Presidents have been believers-church goers none has made a platform and an evangelical voting block as has Bush the Younger].
Joseph Smith, I would surmise, was a party to some deeply profound spiritual insights, but his "frontal personality" may have suffered from some excessive narcissistic attributes--his taking of multiple wives, speculations on becoming a god-creator of another universe, viewing himself as the Last Prophet since Jesus...all those might be interpreted quite interestingly by an ego.
Insofar as Mormonism exists in the Blue/orange sphere, I would identify it as (mostly) fundamentalist. Fundamentalism, I can not stress enough, is a thoroughly modern phenomena. It is not a premodern phenoman. It is a modern attempt to re-assert the pre-modern. Hence Beck's father is an apologist. He tries to use to the resources-tools of modern thought to proof what is essentially mythic. Hence he always fails.
In the 1960s a scholar (though not himself a Mormon believer) recognized a papryus at the Met, as the translation by Joseph Smith of the Book of Abraham--again not recorded in the Bible, part of the Mormon extra-biblical canon.
The papyrii were Egyptian in origin. The original Mormon community purchased them from a local traveling exhibit. In the meantime, thanks to the Rosetta Stone, Egyptian hierogylphs were de-coded. So experts translated the Egyptian documents and compared their translations to those of Smith. The results were not so good, if you a Mormon that is. A Mormon apologist argues that the document that is now translated as the source for the so-called Book of Abraham is not the real document Smith used. That document must have perished in the Chicago Fire of 1871, as was originally believed by everyone, until the discovery in 1966 of the papyrus. Yikes. Rational-level attempts to save myth are quite tortured]. See overview here: Wikepedia is obviously not the most sound of sources, but on this one topic anyway, this is the basic story. Does a good job of listing traditional Mormon arguments against the claim of Smith's bad translation and scholarly counterclaims].
According to Smith, the Book of Abraham tells of Abraham being laid on a sacrifical altar by an Eygptian priest, like Abraham was later to have (almost) sacrificed his son Isaac (Book of Genesis) or his son Ishmael (Qu'ran). Beck claims that her father basically re-enacted in some sense the supposed story. She has flashback memories of him binding her, as a sacrificial victim, and performing Egyptian encantations. That's quick sick, if true. Her father (the Hugh Nibley referenced in the Wikepedia article) correctly identified the papryus as the Egyptian Book of Breathings, related to the Book of the Dead, concerning the proper religious rites over a mummified body.
Also the Mormon belief that the Native American and Pacific Islander tribes are the descendent of ancient Hebrews has been put to the test with genetic testing. Unfortunately, as modern anthropology-forensic studies have shown, the indigenous tribes of the Americas came across the land-bridge of Alaska from Siberia, making them Asiatic in origin.
Beck's difficulties with the Mormon establishment--she was for a time professor at BYU during a spate of scholars being accused of heresy, others being silenced-admonished-strong armed-threatened--during the '90s. This period apparently was a time of Church crackdown. Those crackdowns, it seems, have more or less run their course. In this sense, the Mormon establihsment is following a pretty traditional pattern--although in quite an accelerated fashion: 1. mythic 2. questions to the core of the theology led to some pioneering theologians and a brutal backlash by the religious establishment 3. apologists of the Church in elite, academic circles basically accept the original criticisms of #2 pioneers, but not to describe this church-wide. Leads to a massive disparity between the intelligentsia and the "masses" of the Church, with the leadership in an unenviable position. 4. some reconciliation of these forces, a modernist turn finally seeps down to the common level. The more conservative-reactionary elements may split at this point.
The Mormons are currently in #3. The scholars causing this injunction-shift are known as the FARMS (Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies).
So to parse it memetically.
Smith's diviniation practices: purple
The Tribal in-group sense: red
The mytheme: blue
Fundamentalist-apologetic/official Church theological reflection: blue-orange
FARMS: orange (Orange/blue?).
Beck and her husband both left the Mormon church officially. According to the dogmatic-mythic interpretation, they will spend everlasting days in the outer darknesss-worse than hell. Hell at least has fire and torments. The outer darkness is cold, dark nothingness, total despair. But Kant was right, ultimately, not religious institution-dogmatic theology can invade the sanctity of the inner world. We all have to become responsible for ourselves, especially in terms of our spiritual journeys.
Beck rightly points out that most of the Mormons she knows are kind people, flawed but simply trying to live out their lives the best they can. Their opinions are probably in many ways unexamined, but generally they are willing to steep outside their boundaries, to interact with others in concrete situations. And they certainly leave room within the community for many to develop. It is as Beck says, usually, the religious establishment whose sins are the most damaging. Their livelihoods, their standing in the community are based on power, often abuse of it. To keep the imbalance, fear and shame-based tactics are often employed. Meanwhile the average church-goer loves his/her church deeply and yet doesn't understand why there have been such evil deeds done by their leaders. Why the scapegoating, the secrecy, and the legal-hardballing expected of corporations but not churhces?
As someone who spent four years of his life in a Roman Catholic seminary, during the height of the clerical sexual abuse scandal (and bishops scandals of protecting the insitution and attacking the victims), I agree (mostly) with her assessment. There was certainly a lot of ignorance and unquestioned assumptions around amongst the regular church-goer, but there sins, at least religiously, never seemed as nefarious as those in responsiblity-authority. Most of the sins of the pew-warmers are just ignorant. The leaders, in some cases, know better, on some deep level they know better, and yet they continue on locked into their fear and guilt. People like Martha Beck's father.
Her story, prima facie, seems grounded, although it is entirely possible that she has either invented the thing for publicity or is simply being honest about memories she has that may in fact not be historically-based.
Beck has a very strong spiritual life, and recounts numerous spiritual experiences common throughout the spiritual legacy of the human race, especially of the subtle-soul level nature. She is a great example of a modernist spiritual seeker. A sociologist by training, she explicitly discusses her theory that mystics are scientists of the soul. She studies all the spiritual traditions of the world and begins to practice. She seeks evidence and undertakes spiritual practice like an experiment. Her empiricism, is best described as "experientialism". She follows in the footsteps of great spiritual experientialists like William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience), Aldous Huxley (Doors of Perception), and the like.
She shows in other words that as Wilber has pointed out, it is not modern epistemology that has destroyed spiritual practice and religious belief, it is postmodernism, especially Continental European philosophy. Postmodernism is based on the notion that all truth is context-dependent and socially co-constructed. The contemplative path, experientially understood, typically involves a solitary quest that seeks to experience transcendent, sometimes seemingly non-embodied states of consciousnses and realization.
As a totally unscientific proof of Wilber's thesis that postmodernism (not modernism) is the real negater of contemplative spiritual worldview, I would point to my year of philosopy studies at Fordham U., part of my training to be a Jesuit priest. Fordham is probably (along with maybe Villanova, also Catholic by the way--European, Catholic, shouldn't be a surprise) the strongest philosophy department in the US devoted to Continental postmodern currents of thought. North American, especially US departments, are so analytical, logically postivistic, lingustically, and pragmatically oriented, that the European tradition is relegated to a minor staus. The point being the graduate students in the program, wonderful people mind you, were by and large, influenced as they were by postmodern constructivist currents, that religion was simply a social force or lubricant. It wasn't outright atheism, at least not combatively so (that would be too modernist see), it was more just neglect, irony, and indifference. A much tougher nut to crack.
But in essence they were right. None of the great traditions have managed to answer the terms of postmodernism.
Beck does often mention her Mormon cultural upbringing but it is never really tied more profoundly, I think, to her religious quest. It has at times given her wise insights, at other times violated her inner sanctity, but ultimately the balance lies in her own individual choice as to what to keep, what to forgive, and what to jettison. She promotes a more spiritual libertarian point of view, I would say, with each individual best able to choose for him/herself their own spiritual path (including her children).
She also delves into some telling issues relating to Mormon theology. I'm not some world expert on Mormonism, but the basic facts are fairly well known. Mormonism--which is for many reasons not the preferred term but it is the one most people recognize--began with Joseph Smith, a 19th cenutry American. He claimed to have received a vision from the angel Gabriel (who also it is reputed came to Mary announcing the virgin birth and Muhammad commanding him to recite the Qu'ran). Smith is said to have been directed by the angel to a series of stones on which were recorded The Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is considered a third testament--Old, New, and Mormon--superseding the prior two which, though not incorrect, had been corrupted by Jews and so-called Christians (again like Muhammad).
There are actually multiple groups within the so-called Mormon family, the largest and most famous being The Latter Day Saints. The LDS are part of a larger movement of Christian-like groups known as Restoratiionists. The Restorationists Churches include Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, among others. Restorationists, as the name implies, seek a Restoration. What was "lost" they feel was the Faith, from early on. According to these different creeds, the Church (meaning the Catholic-Orthodox Church) feel into what they call the Great Apostasy--a Church-wide total loss of the true-faith. This occurred by different calculatinos somewhere around 100 A.D.
So for 1700+ years between 100 AD and the mid 1800s when Smith received his vision, there was no true Church, no true believers, and no true prophets on earth. Smith was the new prophet to "restore" the true faith.
Smith apparently, so goes the story, translated the tablets by placing his head in his hat (to induce a darkened visual field no doubt) and then emerging having conversed with the angel and completed the work--note: many official Mormon accounts doubt this version of events.
Either way, Smith translated these "texts" or so he claimed. Smith was known to have practiced traditional diviniation techniques with his father and most likely had ties to Masonic thought. [That connection might explain Mormon practice of secretive rituals involving special handshakes and the like].
The Book of Mormon reports to tell the story of a group of Israelites who flee the Holy Land prior to the fall of the Southern Kingdom in 600 BC only to arrive in the New World. These ancient Israelites become the basis for the Native American Tribes of the Americas. After the Resurrection Jesus comes to visit these long lost "Jews" and tell the great news--this event is not recorded in the Bible, only the Book of Mormon, for those wondering how you missed out on that story in Bible School. The two "tribes" of the Jews of the New World eventually begin to fight one another and Mormon and his son Moroni are the last prophets of this tribe. Moroni writes the tablets in an ancient Semitic script prior to his death and the total annihilation of his tribe, to record the events for future generations.
Mormon theology holds many beliefs that put it at odds with traditional forms of Christianity--Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and mainline Protestant. For example:
1. The existence of a Third Testament that supersedes the New Testament
2. Non-Trinitarian Theology. This is probably the biggest. Mormons, unlike all traditional Nicene Christians, do not believe in a Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit as One God). There is only one Creator and Jesus is his son, in an almost literal sense. They are separate nontheless. Again, with its strict monotheism, not the relation to Islam.
3. The Leader of the LDS is considered to be a Living Prophet (from Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, down the line to today's prophet Gordon Hinckley.
4. Reference to a Divine Feminine, co-equal (?) with the Creator. A Divine Mother Figure, not much spoken about.
5. The teaching of exaltation. Very unique to Mormon theology-spirituality. Exaltation is the belief that upon death, those Mormons (and only Mormons are able to receive this privilege) who are especially sanctified--and male, and most likely married to multiple women--will become gods. No problem here, this is the basic teaching of deification. Here's the twist though. They will become creators of other worlds, in other universes it seems. THEREFORE
6. The Creator-God our universe was a man on another planet in some other lifetime. God, is not, therefore, as in traditional monotheism (Jewish, Christian, or Muslim) a transcendent unconditional Spirit, no bound by time-space, incorporeal in nature.
7. Only Mormon baptism will bring one to the heavenly realms. Mormons can and do, consequently, perform baptismal services in the name of the dead. Every wonder why Mormons are so interested and helpful when it comes to genealogies? Thought it was just down-home curiosity? Think again sucker. There is no mainline Christian equivalent. You can not baptize someone, in Christianity, without them being present bodily and alive.
What is probably the most interesting facet of Mormon theology and revelation is that it is a mythic level narrative that arose in the modern rationalistic post-mythic world. In other words its mythic faith claims can actually be tested. As opposed to every other great world religion--where is the proof or disproof that Krishna ran with all the milkmaidens, that Jesus of Nazareth rose out of a grave, that Muhammad did perfectly recite the angelic voice, that those tablets Moses got up on the mountain were inscribed by God's finger, or that the Buddha was born out the side of his mother's womb?
Mormonism exists then in the no-mans-land between the mythic (blue meme) and the rational (orange meme). Mormonism, mythically, tries to connect the Biblical Abrahamic tradition with the American notion of Manifest Destiny. Remember the American revolution was instigated by some self-serving yet truly visionary group of East Coast Deists and Masons. But that vision would never totally seep into the otherwise very religious culture, especially that growing in the Westernly expanding US. I discussed in an earlier post (The Two Truths of Christianity) the relevance of the First and Second Great Awakenings--particularly the Second--in terms of inculcating the American vision into the less educated, more religious-traditional masses. Mormonism is definitely part of that trend in 19th century America--prior the large scale immigration of Europeans and Asians in the later half of the 19th century.
Mormonism is the most explicit in its linking of the Abrahamic narrative with the American vision, which explains why Mormons have typically been so patriotic, have even been recruited (specifically) by the CIA.
[Aside George W. Bush could be viewed then as the first president to explicitly play the card of uniting the power-consitutional authorities of the Deists with the Biblical faith of the masses. Most presidents have been Baptists who seek to strongly separate the two, and while most Presidents have been believers-church goers none has made a platform and an evangelical voting block as has Bush the Younger].
Joseph Smith, I would surmise, was a party to some deeply profound spiritual insights, but his "frontal personality" may have suffered from some excessive narcissistic attributes--his taking of multiple wives, speculations on becoming a god-creator of another universe, viewing himself as the Last Prophet since Jesus...all those might be interpreted quite interestingly by an ego.
Insofar as Mormonism exists in the Blue/orange sphere, I would identify it as (mostly) fundamentalist. Fundamentalism, I can not stress enough, is a thoroughly modern phenomena. It is not a premodern phenoman. It is a modern attempt to re-assert the pre-modern. Hence Beck's father is an apologist. He tries to use to the resources-tools of modern thought to proof what is essentially mythic. Hence he always fails.
In the 1960s a scholar (though not himself a Mormon believer) recognized a papryus at the Met, as the translation by Joseph Smith of the Book of Abraham--again not recorded in the Bible, part of the Mormon extra-biblical canon.
The papyrii were Egyptian in origin. The original Mormon community purchased them from a local traveling exhibit. In the meantime, thanks to the Rosetta Stone, Egyptian hierogylphs were de-coded. So experts translated the Egyptian documents and compared their translations to those of Smith. The results were not so good, if you a Mormon that is. A Mormon apologist argues that the document that is now translated as the source for the so-called Book of Abraham is not the real document Smith used. That document must have perished in the Chicago Fire of 1871, as was originally believed by everyone, until the discovery in 1966 of the papyrus. Yikes. Rational-level attempts to save myth are quite tortured]. See overview here: Wikepedia is obviously not the most sound of sources, but on this one topic anyway, this is the basic story. Does a good job of listing traditional Mormon arguments against the claim of Smith's bad translation and scholarly counterclaims].
According to Smith, the Book of Abraham tells of Abraham being laid on a sacrifical altar by an Eygptian priest, like Abraham was later to have (almost) sacrificed his son Isaac (Book of Genesis) or his son Ishmael (Qu'ran). Beck claims that her father basically re-enacted in some sense the supposed story. She has flashback memories of him binding her, as a sacrificial victim, and performing Egyptian encantations. That's quick sick, if true. Her father (the Hugh Nibley referenced in the Wikepedia article) correctly identified the papryus as the Egyptian Book of Breathings, related to the Book of the Dead, concerning the proper religious rites over a mummified body.
Also the Mormon belief that the Native American and Pacific Islander tribes are the descendent of ancient Hebrews has been put to the test with genetic testing. Unfortunately, as modern anthropology-forensic studies have shown, the indigenous tribes of the Americas came across the land-bridge of Alaska from Siberia, making them Asiatic in origin.
Beck's difficulties with the Mormon establishment--she was for a time professor at BYU during a spate of scholars being accused of heresy, others being silenced-admonished-strong armed-threatened--during the '90s. This period apparently was a time of Church crackdown. Those crackdowns, it seems, have more or less run their course. In this sense, the Mormon establihsment is following a pretty traditional pattern--although in quite an accelerated fashion: 1. mythic 2. questions to the core of the theology led to some pioneering theologians and a brutal backlash by the religious establishment 3. apologists of the Church in elite, academic circles basically accept the original criticisms of #2 pioneers, but not to describe this church-wide. Leads to a massive disparity between the intelligentsia and the "masses" of the Church, with the leadership in an unenviable position. 4. some reconciliation of these forces, a modernist turn finally seeps down to the common level. The more conservative-reactionary elements may split at this point.
The Mormons are currently in #3. The scholars causing this injunction-shift are known as the FARMS (Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies).
So to parse it memetically.
Smith's diviniation practices: purple
The Tribal in-group sense: red
The mytheme: blue
Fundamentalist-apologetic/official Church theological reflection: blue-orange
FARMS: orange (Orange/blue?).
Beck and her husband both left the Mormon church officially. According to the dogmatic-mythic interpretation, they will spend everlasting days in the outer darknesss-worse than hell. Hell at least has fire and torments. The outer darkness is cold, dark nothingness, total despair. But Kant was right, ultimately, not religious institution-dogmatic theology can invade the sanctity of the inner world. We all have to become responsible for ourselves, especially in terms of our spiritual journeys.
Beck rightly points out that most of the Mormons she knows are kind people, flawed but simply trying to live out their lives the best they can. Their opinions are probably in many ways unexamined, but generally they are willing to steep outside their boundaries, to interact with others in concrete situations. And they certainly leave room within the community for many to develop. It is as Beck says, usually, the religious establishment whose sins are the most damaging. Their livelihoods, their standing in the community are based on power, often abuse of it. To keep the imbalance, fear and shame-based tactics are often employed. Meanwhile the average church-goer loves his/her church deeply and yet doesn't understand why there have been such evil deeds done by their leaders. Why the scapegoating, the secrecy, and the legal-hardballing expected of corporations but not churhces?
As someone who spent four years of his life in a Roman Catholic seminary, during the height of the clerical sexual abuse scandal (and bishops scandals of protecting the insitution and attacking the victims), I agree (mostly) with her assessment. There was certainly a lot of ignorance and unquestioned assumptions around amongst the regular church-goer, but there sins, at least religiously, never seemed as nefarious as those in responsiblity-authority. Most of the sins of the pew-warmers are just ignorant. The leaders, in some cases, know better, on some deep level they know better, and yet they continue on locked into their fear and guilt. People like Martha Beck's father.
posted by CJ Smith @ 12:32 PM
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