Editors’ Note: The essay below should NOT be read as an oblique dissing of Mitt Romney (who’s repugnant enough even without reference to Mormonism), just to favor the candidacy of the equally repulsive—and treacherous—Barack Obama. The purpose is simply one of general culture. Too much ignorance and confusion attaches to Mormonism. Having said that, we think James Joyner, an elegant essayist, is much too kind to Mormons and religious claptrap in general. But that’s only our opinion, and it’s a minor peeve in any case. (Of further interest to this article, please see SELECT ORIGINAL COMMENTS thread below, and an appendix detailing some of the more outlandish notions in the church of LDS.)
South Park’s interpretation of angel Moroni’s (who could think of that name?) presenting himself to jejune Smith.
Mormonism Sure Is Weird
JAMES JOYNER · TUESDAY, JUNE 19, 2012 · OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY.COM
Jeffrey Goldberg asks, “What if Mitt Romney were Jewish?” Rather than the expected argument that it’s improper to question bizarre religious beliefs held by those aspiring to the presidency, Goldberg takes an interesting turn.
The Washington Post (WPO)’s Jason Horowitz reported this month that officials on Mitt Romney’s campaign don’t care much for journalistic explorations of their candidate’s religious beliefs.
One spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, has been throwing brushback pitches at reporters who write about Romney’s faith, asking if they would write similar stories about Jews.
According to Horowitz, Saul objected to sentences in an earlier Washington Post piece describing how Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, is said to have discovered the golden plates that provided the theological underpinnings of his new faith.
“Would you write this sentence in describing the Jewish faith?” she asked, providing an example: “‘Jews believe their prophet Moses was delivered tablets on a mountain top directly from G-d after he appeared to him in a burning bush.’ Of course not, yet you reference a similar story in Mormonism.”
Goldberg correctly points out that we’ve never elected a Jewish president and that recent vice presidential nominee Joseph Lieberman actually got some of that sort of reporting. I’d forgotten that but it’s true:
A New York Times reporter, Laurie Goodstein, detailed Lieberman’s exotic rites at length, in the manner of an anthropologist explaining a previously unknown Amazon tribe: “Many of Mr. Lieberman’s most basic religious rituals are intimate acts,” the article said. At morning prayer, “the senator lays on tefillin, the small leather boxes that contain four biblical passages written on parchment, binding the boxes to one arm and his forehead with leather straps.”
Here’s where it gets interesting:
So what does the Romney camp find so frightening? In talking to my Mormon friends (some of my best friends are Mormons), the answer is clear. The practices and origin stories of most religions, when viewed by outsiders, all seem fairly strange. But Mormonism seems just a bit stranger than the rest. The great fear is not that Americans will see a Mormon politician as too sinister to lead the country (the way that some Baptist leaders once saw the Catholic John F. Kennedy) but that Americans will see a Mormon as too bizarre to be president.
They point to the issue of “sacred underwear,” the derisive term for undergarments worn by some Mormons to remind themselves of their religious responsibilities. Many find the concept odd, but should they? Is Mormonism really that much stranger than other religions?
I vividly remember learning from a Catholic friend that, each Sunday, his family would attend church to drink the blood of Jesus and eat his body. Freaky. But is it any freakier than the sight of a bunch of Jews gathering around an 8-day-old boy to watch a man with a beard snip off the tip of the baby’s penis, and then to eat blintzes afterward? Religious Jews, of course, also wear a variation of “sacred underwear” — zizit and tallitot, traditional garments that date back thousands of years, to the ancient Middle East.
The Mormon tradition dates back less than 200 years, to Palmyra, New York. What Mormons suffer from more than any other major religion is proximity. The foundation stories of Mormonism took place in the age of skeptical journalism, and they took place in the U.S. Most Christians believe in a Second Coming. Mormons believe the Second Coming will be in Missouri. Many Muslims believe that Muhammad ascended to heaven from Jerusalem on a winged animal, which has the ring of something mystical and transcendent. If Muhammad had departed for heaven from Tenafly, New Jersey, well, that would open up Islam to some level of derision.
I recall way back in 1997 when 39 members of a California religious cult calling itself Heaven’s Gate committed suicide in order that they might be swept aboard an alien spaceship following the Hale-Bopp comet. I recall this tragedy being discussed with great credulity on that weekend’s “This Week” roundtable, which happened to be on Easter Sunday. I recall thinking that, with the notable exception of the suicidal component, the belief system of the Heaven’s Gaters seemed far less silly than those who believed that our invisible overlord sent his only begotten Son–who was actually just an aspect of himself–to earth whereby he would be born to a virgin who was herself born to a virgin in order that he might undergo 33 years of testing and ultimately die for our sins only to be resurrected three days later in order to give mankind hope for eternal redemption, which would come at some time at least two thousand years into the future when he would return. At least we had good reason to believe that the Hale-Bopp comet existed.
Mormonism is strange in comparison to more mainstream Christian beliefs mostly because it takes all of the strange beliefs of Christianity and heaps some new ones on top. At the end of the day, though, I take the same view of Mormonism as South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker: the mythology is absurd hokum but most Mormons simply take away broad lessons about the value of family, community, and common decency.
About the author
James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He’s a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. Follow James on Twitter.
_____
ADDENDUM
Source: BibleFacts
Mormon Errors
On Cults
In 1820 a 15 year old boy named Joseph Smith said that the angel Moroni (other versions say God or three angels) appeared to him and told him all churches were wrong, their professors were corrupt, and all their creeds were an abomination, so in 1830 he founded the Mormon cult. He said the true Gospel had not been preached for 1800 years, and Mormonism is the only true church. Joseph Smith was assassinated in Carthage Illinois in 1844.
The teachings of the cult are as follows:
A race of gods, {advanced humanoids from a planet orbiting the mysterious star Kolab} who were once only men but through adherence to Mormon teachings became gods, called a council and decided that Jesus would be the god and savior of planet earth. Lucifer, spirit brother of Jesus 1, wanting to be God and savior of earth, lead a rebellion and lost. The followers of Lucifer became demons and therefore denied bodies of flesh and blood for all eternity. Those who remained neutral in the rebellion were cursed to be born with black skin 2. Those who followed Jesus were born with white skin.
This explains the Mormon doctrine of the pre-existence of souls and the doctrine that God the father has a body of flesh and blood 3.
God the Father is also called Michael the archangel 4.
The father god, Adam 5, came from Kolab to earth with one of his wives, Eve, to populate the planet, and of course that means there was no fall.
Joseph Smith and Brigham Young both taught originally that polygamy was good. The Scripture says its sin, and so does the book of Mormon, Jacob 2:22.
Later the father god, Adam, came back to earth and had sex with the virgin Mary 6 to give Jesus a physical body. {This denies the virgin birth and conception by Holy Spirit 7}
Jesus married Mary, Martha, and Mary Magdalene and had children 8, through whom Joseph Smith is supposed to be a direct descendant.
Salvation is exaltation to godhood. The goal is for the Mormon male to become a god and with one or more goddesses populate whole new worlds. Goddesses will be eternally pregnant.
Jesus died to pay for our sin nature, but His blood does nothing to cover our individual sins 9.
You must pay for your own sins with your own blood.
Salvation is accomplished by works, baptism, and temple marriage. Without a temple marriage a woman can never become a goddess. Therefore the woman must be totally obedient to her husband or he may choose not to resurrect her.
If you die and go to hell a Mormon descendant of yours can be baptized in your place. Eventually no one will be in hell. This is why the Mormon cult is the best place to go for genealogical research, their religion depends on it.
Using alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, coke, or Pepsi or not tithing can result in being removed from the cult and thereby loosing godhood.
The Bible tells us that Satan originated the “you can become gods” lie in Genesis 3:5.
Galatians 1:8 says, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed!” (NRSV)
The fact that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young taught these and other occultic doctrines is well documented. The current LDS and RLDS may not hold to all of these teachings, (for instance, most Mormon groups no longer hold to the Adam is God doctrine) but why continue to belong to a group that still holds to the name of such false prophets?
Famous Mormon quotes:
“God was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens.” (Joseph Smith, Times and Seasons, Aug. 1, 1844)
As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.” (Lorenzo Snow, Millenial Star, Vol. 54)
“In the beginning the head of the GOD’S called a council of the GOD’S and they came together and concocted a plan to create the world and the people in it.” (Joseph Smith, The Journal of Discourses, Vol. 6)
“In the heaven where our spirits were born, there are many GOD’S, each of who has his own wife or wives which were given to him previous to his redemption while yet in his mortal state.” (Apostle Orson Pratt, The Seer, Vol. 1, Pg 37)
“If we should take a million worlds like this and number their particles we should find there are more GOD’S than there are particles of matter in those worlds.” (Apostle Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 2, Pg. 345)
“The Father has a body of flesh and bone as tangible as man’s…” (Doctrine and Covenants, Sec. 130:22)
Our God and Father in heaven, is a being of tabernacle, or, in other words, he has a body, with parts the same as you and I have.” (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 1:50)
“When our father Adam came into the Garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body and brought Eve, one of his celestial wives, with him… He is our father and our GOD and the ONLY GOD with whom we have to do.” (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 1, Pg. 50)
1. Journal of Discourses Vol. 13 p.282
2. Journal of Discourses Vol. 17 p. 290
3. Pearl of great price 4:1-4; See John 4:24 & Luke 24:37-39
4. Doctrine & covenants Sec. 104:28
5. Doctrine & covenants Sec. 27
6. Doctrine & covenants Sec. 4 p. 218
7. Journal of Discourses Vol. 1 pp. 50,51; Matthew 1:20
8. Journal of Discourses Vol. 4 p. 259
9. Journal of Discourses Vol. 3 p.247, Vol. 4 p.219,220
All Biblical quotations taken from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
www.biblefacts.org Date: 6-1995
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One Response to “Tangled in absurdities: Mormonism is pretty weird (but all religions are!)”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Doug Mataconis says:
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 13:02
The “weirdness” of Mormonism is, to some extent, a function of the fact that it is a relatively young religion. When Christianity was roughly 150 years old its members were still worshiping in secret in many parts of the Mediterranean world because their contemporaries viewed them as members of a cult.
Like or Dislike: 4 1
gVOR08 says:
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 13:15
James–not sure I’m following your point here. It seems to be – We shouldn’t regard Mormonism as weird because it’s a religion and religions are weird. Or is it just – Leave my guy Mitt aloooooone.
Like or Dislike: 10 1
Jeremy says:
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 13:18
Well said, James, well said. As a nonreligious person, I view all religions roughly equally (aside from the more violent aspects of some sects of some.)* If you think about it, Mormonism is no more weird than most garden varieties of mainstream Christianity. I also don’t think it’s really that important for a journalism article. I just don’t. Call me when he presses for a law mandating we all have magical underwear.
* Necessary disclaimer in case someone comes in here and says “Well what about the Islamists, huh huh huh?” Uh, well, yes, obviously they’re a different case…
Like or Dislike: 3 1
James Joyner says:
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 13:21
@gVOR08: My point is that Mitt Romney’s religion is not really any stranger than Barack Obama’s religion. Absent proposals to make aspects of their belief systems public policy or other angles that would impact performance in office, it should just be a non-issue.
Like or Dislike: 6 4
James says:
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 13:23
Goldberg’s really oversimplifying. Mormonism has a specific historical and institutional relation with the Federal government of the United State that Judaism doesn’t have; including a (relatively) recent legacy of Anti-Americanism and violent conflict. I mean, how do you write a column about the political context of Mormonism in the United States without mentioning Brigham Young or the Utah War ?
At the height of the tensions, on September 11, 1857, more than 120 California-bound settlers from Arkansas, Missouri and other states, including unarmed men, women and children, were killed in remote southwestern Utah by a group of local Mormon militiamen. They first claimed that the migrants were killed by Native Americans. This event was later called the Mountain Meadows massacre and the motives behind the incident remain a mystery.
Like or Dislike: 10 0
mattb says:
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 13:29
@Doug Mataconis:
The “weirdness” of Mormonism is, to some extent, a function of the fact that it is a relatively young religion.
I think the a lot of the “weirdness” bridges Doug and Goldberg’s comments. What Mormonism has against it is that from a timing perspective, it’s not just that it was a new Religion in terms of its founding, but that it was founded at a time when there was a greater effort to record and archive contemporaneous events. So we know a lot of historical information about Joseph Smith and later Brigham Young. While some contemporaneous records exist that point to the historical existence of Christ, we don’t have (for example) documentation of his criminal record.
The proximity piece also goes far beyond simply that Mormonism emerged in America — it’s that America and Americans are fundamentally baked into the very foundational myths of Mormonism (I’m using “myth” as a social scientific term, not a value judgment). It wasn’t simply the America was founded by Christians, it’s that Christ was American before there was an America.
That combination of lots of “neutral historical” documentation about Mormonism’s founders and the early action of Mormons, combined with the way it explicitly combines American Exceptionalism and Christianity (versus using Christian ideas as a basis for American Exceptionalism), with a healthy dose of odd practices (“magic underwear”, history of Polygamy, the pre-1978 restrictions on the salvation of Blacks, and the post death baptizing of a wide range of individuals) thrown in, create a lot of problems.
As James says, I think Stone and Parker have it right. And every religion has a lot to answer for in terms of strange beliefs and dubious practices. I still think that the Romney camp feels that the less said about Mormonism, the better — at least until after the election.
Like or Dislike: 3 1
mattb says:
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 14:05
I just realized that I forgot the other key issue with Mormonism — secrecy. Like it or not, the key Religions of The Book and other world religions are largely transparent. There may not be specific areas of a Church/Temple/Mosque that non-believers cannot enter, however, that’s different then completely shutting them out of the temple.
As with Scientology, the restriction on information to non-members (and even to certain members of the Religion) creates a lot of speculation about Mormonism.
On the plus side, without Mormonism we never would have had either Battlestar Galactica…
Like or Dislike: 8 0
Steven L. Taylor says:
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 14:16
@mattb:
I just realized that I forgot the other key issue with Mormonism — secrecy
I was going to add this if no one else did. I think that the secrecy element exacerbates the weirdness factor.
Like or Dislike: 5 0
michael reynolds says:
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 14:29
Essentially, as mentioned above, the problem is that Mormonism didn’t arise in “ancient times” it arose from “modern man.” It doesn’t qualify as mythology because it originated in an era when we had science. So it seems extra stupid.
The reason Christians despise Mormons is precisely because their absurd modern revelations cast a critical light on the equally absurd ancient Christian revelations, and as well on the even more ancient Jewish revelations.
Like or Dislike: 16 2
Stormy Dragon says:
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 14:33
those who believed that our invisible overlord sent his only begotten Son–who was actually just an aspect of himself–to earth whereby he would be born to a virgin who was herself born to a virgin in order that he might undergo 33 years of testing and ultimately die for our sins only to be resurrected three days later in order to give mankind hope for eternal redemption, which would come at some time at least two thousand years into the future when he would return.
Not to mention that the reason the only reason we need to redeemed is to appease the anger of the same being supposedly doing the redeeming, who is pissed at mankind for eating fruit which he gave us immediate access to and made no attempt to protect, but which we were supposed to know was wrong to eat despite having been deliberately made with no innate understanding of the concept of right and wrong. Although in our defense, we only did it because we got tricked by the talking snake.
Like or Dislike: 10 1
DRS says:
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 15:51
Part of the problem for Mormons is that while Moses (to take one example) is unknown outside the Bible, the Torah and the Koran, and therefore is not a historical entity to believers, Joseph Smith left a trail behind him that historians could follow and have since the time he left the eastern US for Utah. If there were references to Moses and his activities in Babylonian or Egyptian archives, then Moses would look less holy and more human, and therefore more fallible.
Please note I am not saying that Moses wasn’t “real” or “didn’t exist”; I am only saying that no one else, no “third party” mentioned him in their own writings.
Also, for a real hoot, get hold of the late Norman Cohn’s Europe’s Inner Demons, his look at the history of the great European witchscraft of the 15th-17th centuries. The first chapter is a description of a Roman government spy who infiltrated an early Christian service in 1st century Rome and who was completely unclear on the concept: he describes the entire ritual as if it were cannibalism! Quite funny.
Like or Dislike: 3 0
sam says:
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 16:16
About the only really weird thing about Mormonism for me is their attitude toward coffee. That is weird.
Like or Dislike: 1 1