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Meet the Mormons: from the margin to the mainstream

Commonweal, Nov 9, 2007 by Mathew N. Schmalz

There's been a lot of "Mormon talk" in the air lately. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has something to do with that, as do the acclaimed HBO series Big Love (chronicling a fictional polygamist family that splits from its traditionalist Mormon roots) and the real-life trial of polygamist Warren Jeffs. People have the usual questions. What do Mormons believe? Are they really Christians? How many wives do they have, anyway?

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Such talk arises whenever Mormons step into a more prominent role in American public life. In the nineteenth century, the talk was about Mormon polygamy and Utah statehood. In the early twentieth century, it centered on apostle Reed Smoot and whether he could assume elected office as a Utah senator. Now the talk surrounds Romney's presidential bid. Some of the punditry has been less than edifying. Jacob Weisberg wrote in the online journal Slate that he could never vote for someone whose religion "is based on such a transparent and recent fraud." Private Mormon temple rituals have been laid bare in the media, and Romney has had to endure one too many stories about traditional Mormon undergarments.

Having taught about new religious movements at the College of the Holy Cross for several years, I've found that my students combine a personal openness to Mormonism (one had a long-term boyfriend who was a Mormon) with deep skepticism about details of Mormon belief. Like many people, my students tend to find the Book of Mormon fanciful at best. Translated by Joseph Smith from golden plates he claimed to have unearthed in 1827 on a hill in upstate New York (Smith said he was guided there by Moroni, an angel who also gave him seer stones with which to translate the plates' strange markings), the book is both a "testament of Jesus Christ" and a history of two rival American nations founded by the sons of Lehi, a prophet who sailed from Jerusalem to America in 600 BC.

My students have trouble taking Smith's seemingly outlandish claims seriously; and for those committed to Christian orthodoxy, key elements of Mormon doctrine remain deeply alien. Joseph Smith claimed to have seen God and observed that he has a form much like our own--with ears, eyebrows, and other human features. This God is not only the spiritual parent of us all, he is also the spiritual and physical parent of Jesus Christ. According to the Book of Mormon, Jesus also had a prior "unembodied" existence as "Jehovah," God of the Old Testament. In addition to asserting the untrinitarian nature of the Godhead, Smith claimed to have restored the authentic church of Christ, along with the ancient Aaronic and Melchizidek priesthoods.

Smith's vision of the afterlife was also distinctive. It foresaw a place divided into three levels: the "celestial kingdom," for faithful Mormons and those who receive the full gospel of Jesus Christ in the hereafter; the "terrestrial kingdom," for less faithful Mormons and righteous non-Mormon "Gentiles"; and the "telestial kingdom," for murderers, adulterers, and apostates. In this tripartite scheme, those in the celestial kingdom labor to achieve "exaltation." Some Mormon prophets and theologians have speculated that those who attain exaltation become gods of their own planets and give birth to spirit children who pass from preexistence through corporeal life to the afterlife. This redemptive vision was further clarified when Joseph Smith examined an Egyptian papyrus obtained from a traveling mummy exhibition. On the papyrus, Smith proclaimed, was a depiction of Kolob, the planet or star "set nigh to the throne of God," nearest to the celestial realm.

It was Kolob and associated exotica that first drew me to the study of Mormonism. It all seemed so strange: polygamy, the banning of blacks from the priesthood, the expansive understanding of prophecy. Not to mention the story of Joseph Smith and his many visions--including his 1832 prediction of a future war over slavery starting in South Carolina, and his revelation that prohibited "strong" and "hot" drinks as well as proscribing tobacco. As I reflected on the strangeness of Mormonism, I started thinking about the sense of strangeness that had singled me out as the "Catholic guy" in high school, college, and graduate school. I was often asked to present the "Catholic view" on some issue, or publicly pressed by colleagues to explain why Catholics held certain peculiar beliefs. Hearing Catholic stereotypes repeated in conversation, I always wanted to say, "Well, maybe if you'd seriously listen to Catholics, you'd realize we're not all the same."

Mormon friends and colleagues experience similar feelings when they hear people dismiss their religion. But if one sees Mormonism as something more than eccentricity or pathology, one can imagine a more substantive kind of Mormon talk, especially surrounding Mitt Romney's candidacy. Romney could be asked how Mormon beliefs in the salvific significance of America have shaped his understanding of the U.S. mission in the world. Or one could ask him how the Book of Mormon's narrative of a conflict of civilizations has shaped his own understanding of our present moment in history. It would also be interesting to know how Romney understands the challenges facing socially marginalized groups, given Mormonism's--and his own family's--experience of persecution.

Meet the Mormons: from the margin to the mainstream

Commonweal, Nov 9, 2007 by Mathew N. Schmalz

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