I have never understood how Mormons can keep a straight face when talking about Mormon beliefs. They range from the crackpot ( the 12 tribes in their cork submarines and how Momon men get their own planets after they die) to the offensive (their beliefs about the nature of God).
I think that there are a lot of Mormons who would really just like to be Evangelical Christians, only with a bit more structure. Smith was a sort of quack who dabbled in get rich quick schemes and looked for gold through a crystal in his “magic hat,” but he had been brought up in what was called the Burnt Over District, an area of Upstate New York and bordering states that had had so many wandering preachers and ecstatic revivals that there was nobody left to revive anymore. The nature of Evangelical Christianity is anti-institutional, so there was no way to make the results of the revivals last; people had no church to join, so it would all wear off.
Joseph Smith, who saw himself as a “second Mohammed,” essentially took a combination of formless emotional Arianized Christianity (where Jesus is not the Son of God, but essentially a very important prophet, just as in Islam), his own totally nutty cosmology and some self-serving beliefs, such as his right to several wives, and adopted a structure for them - one that was also present in his 19th century rural world, that of Masonry. Mormon rituals and even a lot of their internal structures are based on Masonry and the secret society model (lodges and secret societies were very popular in the unrooted, isolated world of 19th century and frontier America). Brigham Young, who was even more organizationally minded, consolidated all this.
Eventually, I guess they’ll have to make a choice. It will be either to go whole hog with their nuttiness (the reason they can’t really reject the “primitive” Mormons who practice polygamy and live on welfare in the desert is that these people actually are following pure Mormon beliefs) or their “Presiding Bishop” will have a dream and announce that God sent Joseph Smith just to shake people up and put them on the right footing, and that now the time for his beliefs are over and the Mormon church will make a profession of faith in the Nicene Creed.
LDS can keep their faces straight for two reasons. One is, they do not understand or care how their beliefs differ significantly from other beliefs, and they are taught from earliest childhood that their beliefs are ‘right’ while all others are ‘wrong’. When they discuss their religion with others outside the faith they are ‘sharing the Gospel’, or having a ‘first discussion’ with them.
This is a very, very excellent and succinct summary of the heritage of the religious history of the area traversed by the Erie Canal. Its fervence was so stirred by the The Second Great Awakening and the likes of Charles Finney, as well as evangelists and religious sects coursing back and fothe between New England and the midwest, that people got very tired and numbed to the emotional levels and sin-socking preachers.
It was that area in which I was born and grew up, that is only now becoming approachable by sincere and warm Truth-bearers of New Testament Christianity.
That's a good one! I have never heard that one before, is it in their SciFi novel?