OOOOPS!
BAD dreams!!
Posted on 06/21/2013 4:31:51 AM PDT by Colofornian
The Mormon Church has an ambivalent history with Christianity’s most iconic symbol, the cross. For about 70 years, the cross was generally tolerated within the church’s cultural fabric. However, the first decades of the 20th century initiated a slow but steady expression of disapproval of the cross; a criticism influenced by LDS leaders’ willingness to publicly declare the Roman Catholic Church as the “church of the devil” described in LDS scripture.
“Banishing the Cross: The Emergence of a Mormon Taboo,” (John Whitmer Books) by Michael G. Reed, is a slim but valuable volume on the history of the Mormons’ relationship with the cross. As Reed notes, the Mormon Church was founded during an era of widespread Protestant hostility to the cross, a hostility that was due to that era’s wariness of Catholicism.
As Reed notes, Mormons were generally no fans of Catholicism, but they were more responsive to the cross as a religious symbol. There are two reasons for this. The first was that Mormonism was founded during a time of spiritual awakening in the early United States. While “organized religion” was criticized, individualistic spirituality flourished. Within these “rebel theologies,” spiritual manifestations were not uncommon. The symbol of the cross often played a role. Another reason the cross was tolerated by early Mormons, according to Reed, was due to founder Joseph Smith’s interest in Freemasonry. In fact, Nauvoo in the early 1840s was a hotbed of Freemasonry interest.
That interest is a key reason that the symbol of the cross traveled with the saints to Utah. Reed presents many photographs, both central to Mormonism and 19th century Utah, in which the cross is prominent.
However, as Reed notes, criticism of the cross started to creep more into the Mormon culture as a the 20th century began. Reed cites statements from leading Mormons, including then-apostle Moses Thatcher, that connected the cross to anti-Catholicism. Around 1915, a proposal in the Salt Lake area to put a cross on Ensign Peak received significant opposition, one that initially surprised LDS supporters. The eventual failure to place a memorial cross at Ensign Peak is cast — correctly by Reed — as a dispute between church leaders. The author writes that younger church leaders, such as David O. McKay and Joseph Fielding Smith, had not grown up in the early era of the LDS Church and therefore had not been influenced by the more liberal, anti institutional, even anti-government thought of the 1840s to 1860s LDS leadership. Also, they had not been influenced by Freemasonry.
In my opinion, it’s important to note that in the first 30 years of the 20th century the LDS Church leadership had what might best be referred to as a “second Mormon reformation.” Leaders such as McKay, Fielding Smith, and later J. Reuben Clark, Mark E. Peterson and Bruce R. McConkie, successfully moved the church to extremely conservative ideology, including a renewal of harsh rhetoric against Catholicism.
As Reed notes, Joseph Fielding Smith wrote, “To bow down before a cross or to look upon it as an emblem to be revered because of the fact that our Savior died upon a cross is repugnant…”
The more blunt McConkie described the Roman Catholic Church as “being ‘most abominable above all other churches,’” writes Reed.
What I describe as a conservative era eventually endured about as long as the early Mormon Church’s initial tolerance of the cross. In the 21st it has waned. As Reed notes, it would be shocking to hear an LDS leader denounce Catholicism as McConkie once did. However, Reed still sees an institutional taboo against the cross in the LDS Church. To still use the term “taboo” though is too harsh.
While it’s true that an anti-Catholic diatribe by an LDS leader would be greeted with shock today, it’s also true that a talk about the symbolic spiritual value of the cross would mostly be greeted with non-surprised acceptance by most Latter-day Saints.
This article, from the LDS publication The Ensign, is evidence of a stance on the cross that would have been at odds with the rhetoric of church leaders of the past. A specific condemnation of the cross may be an occasionally tactless utterance from some church members, but most others would find such beliefs offensive. Today, Latter-day Saints define the cross as a responsibility to live a righteous life. That seems a pretty ecumenical position.
OOOOPS!
BAD dreams!!
Except that FR MORMONs will complain that those who USED to 'be in the culture' no longer have ANY validity to speak about the things they know, were taught, and/or lived.
People view the Cross and remember Jesus’ Sacrifice, it’s hard if you are a mormon to wear the garden around your neck.
Maybe you could have asked him why he wears so called “holy underwear”.
I have had my mormon family tell me it is sick, I have a necklace with a little silver cross.
Very simple and easy way to put the facts.
Thanks
And I suppose each Christmas, every time you drive by a house or business with a nativity scene or creche, you stop, ring the doorbell or enter the business if open, and question the owners about the meanings of these symbols...and start accusing them of engaging in "idolatry" eh?
Are you consistent then with these types of treatment toward such symbols?
If not, then why have you -- and Mormons -- chosen to single out the cross for this type of treatment? What then is so offensive to you -- and to Mormons -- about the cross?
I mean, do Mormons take offense to every mention of a crib in a Christmas carol -- or nativities, living or otherwise -- that depict the Christ child?
Although I am not Catholic, I know none that worship Mary’s image, revering is not worship.
Wearing a Cross is not worship, it is a simple of remembrance.
I am not sure why you apparently see them as the same.
Idols were objects that are/were worshiped as a god, not reminders.
One of my mormon uncles a former bishop, told me that mormons abandoned the cross because they didn’t want people to think they were Christians.
All one has to do is read mormon teaches and historical writings (of theirs) to see the hostility of mormons towards Christians/Catholics.
Now Christian/Catholic hostility to the Cross is just silly, never was, never will be, I guess its away to validate mormon hostility.
?????
I’m not familiar with that ring. What’s the symbol about? Ase they letters — a little oddly shaped -— like “CPT”?
Mrs. I had the opportunity to visit Rome two years ago, I saw some of the most beautiful wall paintings, statues and tapestry ever, some would take your breath away.
(I is a shame we have seemed to have lost that art form)
A very nice young man was pointing this or that out and made a really good point, something I am sure I should have thought about, all of these art forms representing the Glory of God, the Story of Creation, The Bible in general because most people could not read.
So the teachers of the time had to use visual means to teach the Scriptures, to make them come alive so to speak.
Which is why these church building Catholic/Christian are covered with art.....I thought yep he is probably right.
Because I cann’t spell the “P” word without auto correct changing it into something which makes no sense.
And some people difference them, mormonism does as well, although they (mormons) refer to them both disparagingly.
okay; fair ‘nuf
To be sure, the cross was not widely used as a symbol during the first centuries, because it was shameful at the time. But in the 4th century, it became the public symbol of Christianity. The most usual pictorical representation of Jesus in graves was as the good shepherd and him as a beardless young man. As to three dimensional representations, there was always some objection, but this only boiled over into controversy in the 8th century in the iconoclast movement, after the Emperors, in an effort perhaps as gesture to rebut the Muslim criticism of Christian polytheism and its’ pagan’ practices.
Idols were not regarded as gods but as sacred objects, little “homes” for the gods. Making an idol was, however, a way of delimiting a god, describing his attributes ,making him physically present by invoking his name. The god of the Jews was noniconic not only in that he could not be properly represented but not even named. Nonetheless, He was localized in the people of Israel and even physically in the tent Tabernacle and in the Temple, where the Ark was his throne.
Kind of neat design.
I was going by this:
i·dol
object worshiped as god: something that is worshiped as a god, e.g. a statue or carved image
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