Mormon Heretic

After Christmas, we decided to finally upgrade our television, and got a new 55 inch HD LCD.  It’s pretty nice.  As part of the package, we are able to download Netflix directly to the television.  The first Netflix movie I watched on my new television was Ken Burns’ America: The Shakers (1985).  I picked it because I remembered that there was a mission to the Shakers in D&C 49.

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For those unfamiliar with a home teacher, the idea is to have everyone visited in the ward, whether they come to church or not.  The home teacher often offers a short spiritual thought.  I believe home teaching is based on D&C 20:47, “And visit the house of each member, and exhort them to ^apray ^bvocally and in secret and attend to all ^cfamily duties.”

It’s a nice idea in theory, but in practice, home teaching is quite often something that doesn’t get done very often.  I suspect the average ward completion percentage for home teaching is about 50%.  Usually, people just get too busy to do home teaching each month, but not always.  Home teachers are not always welcome.  In my previous ward, I was assigned to a part-member family (the husband was an inactive member, the wife was a non-member.)  When I got to the door with my partner, we introduced ourselves as the home teachers.  The wife told us at the door that they didn’t go to church, didn’t want to go, and didn’t want us to come back.  I handed her a plate of cookies my wife had prepared, and wished her well.  I reported back to my Elder’s quorum president the exchange, and he told me they would try to have a neighbor become their home teacher on an informal basis.  I had an even more unusual experience today.

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The book for my book club is by Sarah Baringer Gordon,  The Mormon Question.  It’s bee n a really hard book to find at the library (nearly impossible), so I got a late start on it.   It takes a very different approach to the polygamy question.  Ms Gordon has a law degree, and so she talks about the legal arguments concerning the separation of church and state.  I’ve learned a lot about the evolution of legal thought and the Constitution.  There hasn’t been a strict separation, especially during the 1800’s.  The Mormons helped define that line.

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For my birthday, my wife gave me Dan Brown’s newest novel, The Lost Symbol.  I don’t typically read novels–I prefer sports, history, religion, or biographies–but I read The DaVinci Code and loved it.  Angels & Demons was pretty good.  I had heard rumors that Dan Brown’s book was going to deal with Masonry and Mormonism, so I was looking forward to see a good conspiracy novel.  Well, it turns out the Masonry part was right, but the Mormon part was pretty benign.  There were only 2 obvious–but benign references–to Mormonism.  Some of the plot has some indirect parallels to Mormon thought, though the book focuses more on seeming pagan practices than Mormon ideas.  Anyway, this was fun to read, and I thought I’d try to give a few nibbles from the book, without giving away too much plot.  So, here’s a taste of how related it is to Mormonism (which isn’t much).  I’m not going to give away too much that relates specifically to the main plot, but if you want to read it fresh, you should quit reading now.

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I came across this recent article at Christianity Today describing meetings between evangelicals and Mormons.  Here are some interesting excerpts from the article:

LDS president Thomas S. Monson and his two counselors permitted Standing Together, an alliance of 90 Utah evangelical churches, to use the historic Salt Lake City Tabernacle for a September 13 revival meeting. Throngs of evangelicals and Mormons enjoyed gospel songs and prayed together.

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I have really been enjoying the book More Wives than One by Kathryn Daynes, an associate professor of history at BYU.   In my previous post on the book, I mentioned that marriage wasn’t as regulated as it is today.  There were no marriage licenses, blood tests, or even ceremonies required.  If a couple said they were married, then courts ruled that they were.  That was all that was needed.  It seems that many of the marriage regulations we are familiar with today were influenced by the federal government’s efforts to stamp out Mormon polygamy.  Daynes gives a history of marriage starting on page 58.

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I just saw this movie last night.  I had never heard of it before, and literally knew nothing about it.  I told my wife to pick a movie, and I thought she would pick a chic flick.  She said she thought I might like it because it had something to do with numbers and predicting future events.  I don’t want to give away any plot lines.  It’s not the kind of movie that I typically like.  In fact, I’d say that for about 90% of the movie, I thought, “This is just a weird, creepy movie.”  Then the end came, and I really liked it (though my wife just thought it was a weird, creepy movie.)

Here’s what IMDB said about the movie, and a couple of trailers. Read more…

A friend of mine let me know about this news item at Signature Books.  Apparently, one of their authors (David Wright) has a new book published by Oxford University Press.  For those of you who don’t know, Oxford is known as a pretty tough place to publish.  They have pretty high scholarly standards, so getting published there lends one some great credibility.  So, the original press release at Signature stated that the Ten Commandments were plagiarized from Hammurabi.  The old quote from the site is below.  However, David Wright brought to my attention a correction in the press release.  I will show both of them.

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The 8th Article of Faith for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints states:

8 We believe the ^aBible to be the ^bword of God as far as it is translated ^ccorrectly;

This has to be one of the most oft-quoted articles of faith by members of the LDS church.  In one of my previous posts on Scripture Literalism, the comments referred to Biblical inerrancy and literalism.  Some evangelicals believe that the Bible is both inerrant and literal, and take great issue with the Mormon stance on the Bible.  They don’t believe there are any mistranslations, and that every word in the Bible was spoken by God.  Many of these people discount any contradictions in the Bible.

The Documentary Hypothesis is a theory that seems to identify at least four different authors/editors of the first five books in the Bible (also called the Torah in Judaism, or the Pentateuch.)  I think many Mormons would find great agreement with the Documentary Hypothesis, though they might not agree with every part of the theory.

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I don’t know why, but I love to learn about archaeology, especially religious archaeology.  A few years ago, Simcha Jacobovici came out with a documentary and book called The Jesus Tomb.  In it, he makes a claim that the bones of Jesus may have been located in a tomb unearthed in Jerusalem.  Of course, the Da Vinci Code, while fiction, makes a claim that Jesus and his wife, Mary Magdalene were actually buried in France.  A few months ago, I watched a documentary called Bloodline, which actually goes further, and makes the case that yes, indeed, the bones of Christ and Mary are found in France.  (You can learn more at the official website.)  I just came across a third source, which claims that Christ’s bones are actually located in India.  See this website.

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I came across an article about the Apostle Paul.  After Emporer Nero burned Rome, he blamed the fire on the Christians.  Various apostles were rounded up, and tradition has it that the Apostle Paul was beheaded around 60 AD.  A basilica was built to house parts of his body in about 390 AD.  (Oddly, his complete body is not there, but spread throughout various churches.  Apparently, the Orthodox/Catholic churches felt that bones from dead saints hold some spiritual power, and have often arranged to have bones sent to various churches so that many can share a claim to have various saints bones.)

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Ok, comparing these two books might seem a bit odd, but let me explain.  First of all, I’ve already done a few posts on Abraham.  In the first, I compared the Book of Abraham to the Koran, and wondered if Joseph might have translated an Islamic text, because the story found in the Book of Abraham where Abraham destroys his father’s idols is quite similar to a Koranic tale.  Then my second post on Abraham, I learned that this story is also found in the Jewish Midrash, so there is another non-biblical source for this story.

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Over the last year, I have come across a few bloggers who are members of the Community of Christ (formerly known as RLDS).  I have always been curious about the Community of Christ, and have often wondered the differences in worship between their services, and LDS services.  I wanted to share some of the stuff I’ve learned.

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