Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Politicians & pundits, please stop slandering my Mormon faith
Thought this recent article in the New York Post was well written (although I disagree with him about getting Romney out of the race). It's by Ken Jennings, of Jeopardy fame.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/12/19/2007-12-19_politicians__pundits_please_stop_slander.html
Politicians & pundits, please stop slandering my Mormon faith
This is a strange season to be a Mormon. During my lifetime, I thought the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had effectively mainstreamed itself. Being a Mormon was like being Canadian, or a vegetarian, or a unicyclist - it made you a bit of a conversation piece at dinner, but you didn't come in for any lip-curling scorn.
Now, thanks to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, I can read anti-Mormon screeds almost every day, both from the secular left and the evangelical right. Latter-day Saints are either a gullible joke or a satanic menace (or, if one can handle the cognitive dissonance, both).
Romney has declined to get into specifics defending the faith. This is, I assume, partly a matter of principle (why should he have to?) and partly one of pragmatism (many of his past attempts in that vein have seemed clumsy). But this effectively cedes the field to his attackers, and may give the impression that he's staying silent because there are no good answers - or because he's not sincere about his beliefs.
Take the question Mike Huckabee cannily used to make headlines: "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the Devil are brothers?" Huckabee was widely criticized and quickly apologized, but even the apology gave the wrong impression: that he'd somehow been impolite, and not that the whole slur was off base.
The truth, Huck, is that Mormons believe that God is the Father of us all, which does, I guess, in some sense, make Jesus and Satan brothers. And by the same logic, we also believe that Moses and Orville Redenbacher and Attila the Hun and Neil Diamond are brothers. Happy now?
Then there was commentator Lawrence O'Donnell's bizarre anti-Mormon explosion on "The McLaughlin Group" this month. Unlike Huckabee, he never apologized. Instead, trying to clarify, he's dug himself an even deeper hole, calling Romney's Mormon forefathers "a long line of extreme rapists of teenage children." Not just teen rapists - now we're extreme teen rapists!
There are a lot of things you can say about the polygamy in early Latter-day Saint history, achapter many modern Mormons don't avidly defend. But O'Donnell's implicit charge - that the whole practice was a scam cooked up by dirty old men - is wrong. Early accounts show the church's founders, including Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, tearfully resisted "plural marriage." They complied not out of eagerness for some hot 19th century swinging, but from a conviction that an authentic Old Testament practice was being divinely restored. Many of these early marriages were primarily "dynastic" - ceremonial, that is, and not romantic or intimate in any way.
An equally problematic part of Mormon history has been hammered by pundits like Christopher Hitchens, who has called mychurch "an officially racist organization."
It's true that, prior to 1978, blacks could not be ordained to the Mormon priesthood. But here, too, a more nuanced view is helpful. Joseph Smith is now known to have ordained African-American men in the 1830s and 1840s. The prohibition evolved in later decades, propped up by a series of racist folk doctrines. Mormons were relieved when those teachings were repudiated. (It adds context but little comfort to note that other major U.S. denominations had racist and segregationist dogma on their books until the 1970s as well.) And today, the church has more than half a million black members, including prominent leaders, both here and abroad.
It troubles me that attacks like these will probably just get worse as the campaign heats up. It's not that I think our religion can't handle the scrutiny. I just don't think the slings and arrows of a bloodthirsty 21st century political campaign are the best way to tease out spiritual truth.
I'm tired of being a punch line and a punching bag. If the only way to get Mormonism out of the arena is to get Romney out of the race, then I'm counting the days. This is one Mormon who would rather have a little civility and tolerance than one of our own in the White House.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/12/19/2007-12-19_politicians__pundits_please_stop_slander.html
Politicians & pundits, please stop slandering my Mormon faith
This is a strange season to be a Mormon. During my lifetime, I thought the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had effectively mainstreamed itself. Being a Mormon was like being Canadian, or a vegetarian, or a unicyclist - it made you a bit of a conversation piece at dinner, but you didn't come in for any lip-curling scorn.
Now, thanks to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, I can read anti-Mormon screeds almost every day, both from the secular left and the evangelical right. Latter-day Saints are either a gullible joke or a satanic menace (or, if one can handle the cognitive dissonance, both).
Romney has declined to get into specifics defending the faith. This is, I assume, partly a matter of principle (why should he have to?) and partly one of pragmatism (many of his past attempts in that vein have seemed clumsy). But this effectively cedes the field to his attackers, and may give the impression that he's staying silent because there are no good answers - or because he's not sincere about his beliefs.
Take the question Mike Huckabee cannily used to make headlines: "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the Devil are brothers?" Huckabee was widely criticized and quickly apologized, but even the apology gave the wrong impression: that he'd somehow been impolite, and not that the whole slur was off base.
The truth, Huck, is that Mormons believe that God is the Father of us all, which does, I guess, in some sense, make Jesus and Satan brothers. And by the same logic, we also believe that Moses and Orville Redenbacher and Attila the Hun and Neil Diamond are brothers. Happy now?
Then there was commentator Lawrence O'Donnell's bizarre anti-Mormon explosion on "The McLaughlin Group" this month. Unlike Huckabee, he never apologized. Instead, trying to clarify, he's dug himself an even deeper hole, calling Romney's Mormon forefathers "a long line of extreme rapists of teenage children." Not just teen rapists - now we're extreme teen rapists!
There are a lot of things you can say about the polygamy in early Latter-day Saint history, achapter many modern Mormons don't avidly defend. But O'Donnell's implicit charge - that the whole practice was a scam cooked up by dirty old men - is wrong. Early accounts show the church's founders, including Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, tearfully resisted "plural marriage." They complied not out of eagerness for some hot 19th century swinging, but from a conviction that an authentic Old Testament practice was being divinely restored. Many of these early marriages were primarily "dynastic" - ceremonial, that is, and not romantic or intimate in any way.
An equally problematic part of Mormon history has been hammered by pundits like Christopher Hitchens, who has called mychurch "an officially racist organization."
It's true that, prior to 1978, blacks could not be ordained to the Mormon priesthood. But here, too, a more nuanced view is helpful. Joseph Smith is now known to have ordained African-American men in the 1830s and 1840s. The prohibition evolved in later decades, propped up by a series of racist folk doctrines. Mormons were relieved when those teachings were repudiated. (It adds context but little comfort to note that other major U.S. denominations had racist and segregationist dogma on their books until the 1970s as well.) And today, the church has more than half a million black members, including prominent leaders, both here and abroad.
It troubles me that attacks like these will probably just get worse as the campaign heats up. It's not that I think our religion can't handle the scrutiny. I just don't think the slings and arrows of a bloodthirsty 21st century political campaign are the best way to tease out spiritual truth.
I'm tired of being a punch line and a punching bag. If the only way to get Mormonism out of the arena is to get Romney out of the race, then I'm counting the days. This is one Mormon who would rather have a little civility and tolerance than one of our own in the White House.
# posted by John Colton @ 1:17 PM 
