Christopher Carroll Smith of Mild-Mannered Musings has posted three excellent interviews with different evangelical figures in the Utah area on how they approach Mormons. Since this is a subject which interests most of the participants here, and since I think we have evangelicals currently participating who hold to approaches all across this spectrum, I thought I’d direct everyone’s attention to them:
(UPDATE: Chris has pulled the interviews with Greg Johnson and Mike Stahura; see the comments on the Greg Johnson interview for details. It doesn’t look like the interview with Greg will be edited and re-posted, but the interview with Mike Stahura might.)
Chris also has some follow-up thoughts to these three interviews here. As you’ll see from my comments on those articles, Dean Jackson was my pastor when I lived in Provo and Greg Johnson was the leader of the evangelical Christian Bible study on the BYU campus for my first semester there, so I’ve worked with those two men.
I’m leaving the comments open here, but I want to make it clear that I don’t want to poach discussion from Chris’s blog; any relevant comments on the interviews themselves should go there. What I do want to discuss here is the fact that there’s serious disagreement between evangelicals concerning these three approaches. Chris quotes Mike Stahura’s opinion that other evangelicals are watering down their messages and being “overly tolerant or respectful.” I myself related a story on the interview with Greg concerning how Dean asked me not to attend a Standing Together outreach event because of his disagreements with Greg’s approach. And it’s fair enough that those of us who take the more “liberal” approach to reaching Mormons are critical of our “conservative” counterparts and feel that their approach is often unnecessarily rude and unloving.
So my question is, to what extent is there room to live and let live?
Playing off my last post, in what ways are Evangelicals and Mormons most similar? Be creative. Don’t say things like, “they use the Bible” or “they call it church”.
I’d have to say the thing we most have in common is our desire to see others convert to our faith. Our evangelical impulse. Both Mormons and Evangelicals have their ears tuned in such a way that they hope every conversation can lead to an invitation to church.
I’m hoping that we can find agreement in a discussion about what separates Mormons and Evangelicals the most. We may not ever come to an agreement on all things, but at the very least we can agree about exactly what it is that we disagree about.
The idea for the this post came from a comment made by The Yellow Dart. He as an aside suggested that he thinks the thing that most separates us is the doctrine of “creation ex nihilo” (which means that God created everything out of nothing). I think that is for sure a key area of disagreement but not the thing that MOST separates us.
Instead I think our disagreements start and end with Joseph Smith. In every instance of conflict, everything boils down to the prophetic authority of Joseph Smith. Evangelicals hold him to be a false prophet and thus disregard anything new or contradictory to the Bible. Mormons hold him to be a true prophet and more relevant to our day and age. If we came to a mutual understanding of Joseph Smith virtually every other difference would fade away.
Am I wrong? Is there something more fundamental to our differences?
In spite of my constant grumbling about patriarchal religions and the oppression of women, I actually really enjoy being a woman. My hair’s not going to fall out, I can flirt my way out of a speeding ticket, I’ll get less time should I choose to commit a violent crime, and I didn’t have to pay for the dates when I was single. There’s plenty of other reasons why it’s fabulous to be a woman, but I’m keeping this post G-rated. *cough*
However, there’s a lot that sucks about being a woman, and pregnancy and childbirth went into my “sucks” column as soon as I tried it. I’ve met women who enjoy being pregnant and giving birth, and I’ve heard women gush about what a spiritual zenith these experiences were for them. To borrow an analogy I heard somewhere else, I admire such women in the same way I admire people who run triathlons and don’t swear: I think that’s wonderful, but I have zero desire to be them.
It’s easy to understand, then, that an afterlife which involves women giving birth for eternity sounds a lot more like hell to me. Critics of the LDS church have been asserting that this is what Mormonism teaches for ages. Continue Reading »
A recent comment on the “Jesus was a Polygamist?” post justified the reason I keep the comments open there. It was everything I would hope a teenage girl in Utah would say in response. It was the good laugh I was looking for.
But I think it brings up another issue. If you heard someone say these things in your Sunday School class or Bible study, how would you respond? Would you start correcting the number of misstatements? Would you let her go on about her way in blissful ignorance? Some of this information is just her own unfamiliarity with the subject. Other parts of it are clearly things that some oneelse is feeding her.
And for the record, I don’t think this is just about “the problem with Mormonism”. It’s fair to surmise that some Evangelical teenager is capable of making a similarly uniformed comment.
I personely love this picture. I never thought of polygamy when I saw it. I always thought of how Jesus loved the youth and children. Now the rose… if you do your research you’ll notice that the rose in the painting is yellow/gold. With the young women values the color of gold represents virtue and yellow represents good works. Also I don’t see loving looks on their faces, but yearning looks, looks yearning for knowledge. The womens’ postures are either representing their love of the lord, like how Mary Magdeline and her sister loved the lord, and how he is our older brother, or the artist just put them that way not thinking of the can of worms it would open up. With the polygamy thing and Brigham Young, wasn’t it Brigham Young that stopped polygamy. Also polygamy with the early saints was just a way to help the women because this is the early to mid 1800s we’re talking about when women had pretty much no rights so they couldn’t own land, get a job, and do many other things women can do today. In the 1800s women couldn’t really survive without a husband, and their husbands were killed just because of their religion, just because they were mormon. So just drop the mormon polygamy thing already. Those were special circumstances and now women can provide for themselves without a husband, so there is no need.
Perhaps you can craft a response to her in the comment section below.
Time Magazine has an interesting article on the lasting effects of the LDS church’s involvment in Propostion 8 and what they will do in 2010 when the ammendment is attempted to be repealed.
And since we’re talking about same sex marriage again; I felt vindicated by this Moth Podcast about the awkward experience of seeing two gay twins making out with each other at a wedding.
My cousin sent me a link on Facebook tonight asking me what I thought of it. This web site is pretty much bottom-rung, Ed Decker-quality anti-Mormonism (the site contains numerous advertisements for The God Makers and The Temple of the God Makers), but I believe my cousin was being sincere in asking, so I wanted to offer a brief evaluation of the claims on the site. I’ve numbered these where they previously lacked numbers for ease of discussion.
It’s a bit difficult to summarize how accurate these statements are. Some of them make claims about the LDS church which are false in themselves. Others make claims which are more or less true, but it’s false that Mormons are trying to hide these teachings from the public. As such, where either claim was wrong I’ve labeled the statement false and explained why.
Warning: This blog post contains one reference to material from the pre-1990 temple ceremony. I don’t normally discuss temple content in blog posts, but I wanted to analyze the charge, so heads up.
A podcast I listen to about Christians solutions to poverty makes a big point on the tragedy of taking shortcuts. The implications of shortcuts were ringing in my ears as I listened to this Stand to Reason podcast about Charles Finney
Charles Finney was a Presbyterian minister who was largely responsible for the Second Great Awakening, an American revival in the early 19th Century. He’s credited with inventing the modern day “altar call” and born-again experience. What most people don’t know is that Finney was largely influenced by Pelagius, a 4th Century monk and heretic, who didn’t believe in vicarious atonement or original sin. Finney sought to gather people around Jesus as merely a moral figure and make the church a moral reform society. Finney preached that “deeds not creeds” should be our focus to that end.
Probably the worst thing that came out of Finney’s revivals was the “get saved” mentality which sought out converts rather than disciples. It was Finney’s philosophy to do and say whatever necessary to get people to make a decision at that moment. Unfortunately that led to a rather shallow depth of faith for his converts. As other revivals came through the area people were switching back and forth between denominations based on the powerful calls to action the revival preachers offered rather than a rich understanding of the tenets of their faith.
Because of the intense revivalist battles the area eventually earned the name the “burned-over district“. It also became known as the psychic highway. It became a sort of past time in the area to have intense spiritual experiences and to create new religions around those experiences. Among those religions, Mormonism.
This podcast also has a great number of implications and insights into our recent discussion on liberal Christianity and “faithless” religion.
Mormon Matters has an interesting post on unbelief and remaining in the LDS church. Just as interesting are a number of comments that respond to the post. They raise an interesting question about the place of unbelief in a religious faith.
I don’t think I would say it as strongly as this, but this comment by Jettboy kind of resonates with me
With that said, I will say that I find your leaving the LDS Church because you no longer believe in it much more moral than those who stay within. They are spiritual liars and wolves in sheep clothing, and I am not afraid to say that. That is because I DO believe in its theology, authority, scriptures, divinity and Truth! My problem isn’t for those who have some faith and some doubts and are seeking for greater faith. My problem is for those who don’t believe, aren’t seeking to believe, and simply go through the motions. They make me very angry and I feel are getting in the way of blessings and the mission of Mormonism. My fear has never been that the LDS Church will lose members, but that its members will lose faith. I lost the quote (and if anyone can find it for me I would be very thankful), but a Brigham Young quote influenced me greatly. He said, paraphrasing from memory, he would rather be the last or among a handful to believe than have a huge number of members who don’t believe.
I think that if a church is made up of a large group of people who don’t actually believe the heart of the “story” you’ve got the makings of a dead church. The church is at that point just minding the money of a social club that revolves around acting out some quaint traditions that used to mean a great deal to some one else. There’s no impulse to evangelize or affect the culture around you. It’s just acting out the worst parts of religion.
That anyone intentionally makes time to attend a liberal christian church just baffles me. As Paul says, if it’s not true, we are fools to be pitied. Why would you want to play the part of a fool? I have to think that unbelievers would actually be more satisfied outside of the church. I’m convinced life is lived better without a fascade.
If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.
Deuteronomy 24:1-4
If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the LORD. Do not bring sin upon the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.
With these scriptures in mind, the Pharisees came to Jesus to get his take on what constitued what “displeasing” meant. Some thought it only applied to sexual immorality others thought that wrinkles and burnt food counted. The Pharisees liked the latter definition over the former. To them Jesus said:
Matthew 19:3-12
Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”
Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriagebecause of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
There are a number of things set up in the Mosaic law that we would not want to live with and acting on them is not what we would call righteous. The rest of Exodus 21 talks all about selling off your daughter and how to treat slaves.
As you may noticed the Pharisees tried to say that divorce was commanded by Moses and Jesus corrects them. It was permitted because their hearts were hard. As polygamy and slavery are mentioned right there alongside divorce in Exodus 21, I don’t think we have to take a huge jump to conclude that they were also permitted because the Israelites hearts were hard (Further backed up by Paul calling elders to be the husband of but one wife). The rules governing them were provisions for remaining lawfully in the nation of Israel. They were not commandments for righteous living.
Modern day polygamist often claim that living out polygamy is an act of righteousness. I think Jesus quite clearly tells us that it is an act of hard-heartedness.
When God commanded Joseph Smith to resume polygamy was it because he was calling him to righteousness or hard-heartedness? Will we have hard hearts in the afterlife?
This sermon has everything you need to know about saving marriage in our contemporary culture. It also has nothing to say about the debate on same-sex marriage.
It is quite simply a very powerful message about Jesus’ own thoughts on marriage. It even addresses what Jesus thought of polygamy. A topic I didn’t even know he specifically spoke about.
Take the time to listen to this sermon. It will strengthen your marriage and improve our society.
In regards to my interfaith marriage, I decided a long time ago that when I die, my husband and/or his family can go ahead and have me sealed to him posthumously. They know that I disapprove of work for the dead but they still want to do it. I don’t believe in it anyway, so I figure there’s little point in trying to insist that they not do it after I’m gone.
My husband has indicated that he’s not a big fan of the notion of having more than one wife in the next life and has been adamant that he would never, ever get sealed to a woman who isn’t me. The other day I gave him this scenario: “I die tomorrow, making you a 27 year-old single father with a 2 year-old daughter. You have my work done and have me sealed to you within the next year. Then you fall in love with a young LDS woman who’s never been married. You’re great together, she’s a good stepmother to your daughter, and she’s okay with being eternal wife #2. What would you do?” He groaned and admitted that in that scenario, he’d probably get sealed—but he really doesn’t want there to be a second eternal wife.
I gave him another scenario. He dies young. I eventually re-marry another LDS guy (we all know I have a thing)1 and spend the rest of my life with LDS husband #2. He dies, then before I die my LDS relatives want to know which husband to seal me to. I have the option of being sealed to both.
Again, my husband groaned and stated that he really didn’t want to have to share me with anyone. Fair enough; I don’t fault him for feeling that way.
So, the question is: eternal polygamy (both polygyny and polyandry). How do you feel about it? Can you see yourself having other wives or husbands in the next life? Can you see your spouse having other wives or husbands? What would you do if your current spouse died and you had the option of being sealed to a second person? If you’re a woman, you can either pretend that the church’s current policy allows you to be sealed to multiple people while alive, or you can speculate on which spouse you’d eternally jettison under the current standards. If you’re not LDS, pretend. Continue Reading »
There are many people who feel that the collapse of Mormonism is approaching as the dawn of the information age has hit us. The feeling is that the church can no longer control the image of Joseph Smith, Mormon polygamy or of Mormon origins. Since information on the internet cannot be controlled, the church will lose it’s grasp of it members as they become disillusioned and disaffected with the whole story. For an example of this, you can see this You Tube video in which two Mormon missionaries are introduced to more than they knew about Joseph Smith polygamy.
While there is plenty of evidence that there are many Mormons leaving the church based on this scenario (and perhaps worse, many more not becoming Mormons because of it), I do not think this will be the cause of a collapse of Mormonism. Instead I see a different scenario.
There is an aspect of Mormon culture that views the organization of the church in an idealic light. There’s a prevalent cultural view that the President of the Church is having regular encounters with Jesus and that every decision made inside the Church Office Building comes with a direct confirmation from the Holy Ghost. I am of course using a bit of hyperbole in this description and I’m sure if you pressed any Mormon on the street about it they would concede that this is not quite how things operate. But at the very least we could agree that a large number of Mormons are wearing some very rose-colored glasses as they view the decisions made by the church’s full time employees. This attitude coupled with an intense financial scandal could really destroy Mormonism as we know it.
Imagine a scenario where Door-Knobbers, a Mormon owned company, installs interior door knobs in newly constructed facilities (I choose this example because I don’t think any such company actually exist). The company is quite successful and the owner of the company as part of his tithing settlement gives the church a large number of his own shares in the company. Those inside the LDS church that manage the shares are quite pleased as Door-Knobbers continues to become more and more profitable and the shares increase in value. The LDS church decides as part of its investment strategy to invest heavily into Door-Knobbers stock.
What the share managers don’t know is that the vast majority of Door-Knobbers business comes from an exclusive contract it has with the LDS church to install door knobs in newly built ward houses. Part of the reason Door-Knobbers is so profitable is that they are vastly overcharging the LDS church for their services. Also unknown to the LDS church is that Door-Knobbers won the contract by bribing someone in the LDS church to ensure that they would win the contract despite their bid being nearly double the next highest competitor.
Eventually some one discovers the graft, but is told to hush up about it or be disciplined (the Church can’t afford this kind of scandal being the rationale). The whistle-blower decides to go public and indeed is disciplined for it because as it turns out, the church really can’t afford this kind of scandal.
The corruption, of course, would be a major set back for any religious institution or non-profit(see Exhibit A: The Catholic Church). But it would be worse for the LDS church because of the pristine view the members hold of their organization (I’d say the same about Jehovah’s Witness, Christian Science and Scientology). This view would forever be shattered. This breakdown in the honesty of the organization would cause many to conclude that the church is not what they thought it was. Whether the LDS church is promoting this view is really not the point, it’s a condition of the LDS culture that the church must live up to.
I’m spoken up many times that I think every good non-profit organization should have open financial records. I think it’s a serious liability that the LDS church is not open and that the membership doesn’t seem to mind. That being said; I don’t know that financial accountability would prevent this scenario from happening. I have no idea who my church purchases contracts from and whether or not they are competitive. I doubt that level of detail would be exposed through financial accountability. But it could be that financial accountability would create a culture within the Church Office Building that would head this kind of thing off at the pass.
The other solution is for the leadership of the LDS church to start gently reminding the membership that their priesthood leaders are sinners too. This doesn’t have to be done in a way that thwarts their authority but just sets appropriate expectations for their own imperfections. At this point it seems like a herculean feat to get any Mormon to admit that someone in their church has ever done anything in the name of the church in a less than perfect manner. It’s okay to be seeking God’s direction and to be doing your best while you don’t hear a “thus sayeth the Lord” from God in every decision. To hear some Mormons explain it, there is not a single beuacratic decision that isn’t being directed by God. This just isn’t a healthy attitude for anyone.
This last week there was a caller on the Stand to Reason radio show who asked a pertinent question to our discussions. I swear that I am not “Stuart”, but he could be me. It was nice to know that other Evangelicals and Mormons are talking about these issues.
The topic was on the relevance and reliability of personal relevation in finding truth. It seems this will continue to be a central issue in dialouge between LDS and Evangelicals.
I’ve done enough guest posts on hard theological subjects. I think I deserve a foray into Mormon Mommy Blog-ism, so here goes.
There’s a lot that I admire about the way LDS sacrament meetings are done in contrast to how evangelical services are usually conducted. I like that members of the ward regularly get the opportunity to address the congregation; in fact, for all my demi-feminist ranting about the LDS gender system, I do find it ironic that, unless yours is the rare evangelical church with a female pastor of some sort on the staff, you’re much more likely to hear a woman address the congregation from the pulpit at an LDS church than an evangelical church. I like that the LDS version of the Lord’s supper is administered weekly, whereas most evangelical congregations do it quarterly or monthly. And on top of that, what could possibly be more awesome than playing Testimony Bingo or Choose the Wife while you’re bored at church?
I thought I would point out a fascinating series on NPR about current studies into the neuroscience of spirituality and religion. I think these investigations are very relevant to those of us who try to make sense of the religious experiences we have in relation to those of the rest of humanity.
Way back in March, the Christian Science Monitor published an article entitled “The Coming Evangelical Collapse” by Michael Spencer. This article was a bit of a summation of a number of blog post written at Internet Monk. This article caused quite the storm in the Evangelical world. It was picked up by the Drudge Report, which no doubt helped spread its popularity. I highly recommend that you read the article if you have not already.
I think Spencer has a number of valid things to say about the future of Evangelicalism. I think he’s spot on about the rise of the Post-Christian West and the antagonism that Christianity will experience from secularism (and perhaps vice-versa). I think his article also is full of a number of personal gripes he has with Evangelicalsim’s political posturing, the prosperity gospel and Pentacostalism. He admits in this podcast that he wrote the article while angry and his anger produces his best writing (a great listen to get more of his thoughts).
I personally am looking forward to the Evangelical collapse as he describes. it. I do not live in the Bible Belt. I would most likely hate living there and would probably be as cynical and jaded as Spencer is if I lived where he does. The reason I like living in a place (somewhat) antagonistic to my faith is that I get to define Evangelicalism to those around me. People don’t typically align themselves with Christianity unless they actually are commited to being discipled by Jesus. My non-Christian neighbor, if he were living in Texas, would most likely be attending an Evangelical church out of cultural and family pressures. His life would look exactly the same as it does here in California except for how he spends his Sunday mornings. He would self-identify as an Evangelical (and probably vote like one).
There is a “safe” form of Evangelicalism. I want it to collapse. There is nothing safe about following Jesus. We do a disservice to the message of Jesus to allow people to think that they aren’t called to something radically different than the culture at large. If this form of Christianity collapses we Evangelicals will lose a significant portion of our cultural and political strength. That’s great. What we are supposed to be about is so much larger than what movies do well at the box office and what measures get passed on election day.
I think if Evangelicalism collapses the quality of individual Christians will increase. We will begin to actually see something different in the lives of Chrisitans. Our divorce, bankruptcy and abuse stats will no longer reflect the same numbers as the rest of the country. There will be far fewer Evangelicals. Our book, CD and teddy bear sales will drop. Our non-profit organizations and churches will lose a lot of money. But maybe, just maybe Jesus will shine brighter (and we’ll undoubtably pay the price for it).
Evangelicals are terrible givers. It’s a well known fact in Evangelical churches that the vast majority of attenders are not giving regularly much less tithing. My church confronted us with this cold hard fact two weeks after Easter. So much for the afterglow of the Resurrection.
In my church only 18% of the members give “regularly”. Regularly was defined as at least $20 a month for and a total of $1000 a year. To make matters worse, the top 20% of “regular givers” donate 85% of the churches entire budget.
Quite powerfully the pastor asked one section of the sanctuary to stand up which was roughly 18% of the people in the room. He stated, “would we think it odd if these people were the only people in the room singing? Would the rest of you think you are participating?” Then he had all but 20% of that group sit down. He pointed out that if those people had the same attitude toward giving that the rest of the room had, the church would not be running.
We’ve never “passed the plate” in our church. Instead, giving boxes were placed at the back of the sanctuary. With all of the abuses in the Christian world it was quite refreshing to attend a church that didn’t make the offering front and center. But if only 20% of the congregation is being transformed to view their money as God’s first in any meager way, something clearly had to change. Our teaching pastor said, “we’ve tried the subtle approach, we’ve tried the ‘freedom approach, we’ve tried the winsom approach, but none of it’s getting through, so this week we’re going to go with the full frontal assault.” They also made it quite clear that our books are open but if you didn’t trust them to spend the money well, then they need to find a place to worship where you do trust them.”
Have a listen to one of the most powerful sermons I’ve heard on giving.
