Is Heavenly Mother a headache for Heavenly Father? [Mitt, Lds, have a 'Mom-goddess'-- or thousands]

Listen to these words from the LDS hymn, “O My Father”: “In the heav’ns are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare! Truth is reason, truth eternal Tells me I’ve a mother there.” It’s a beautiful hymn, written by Eliza R. Snow. We sang it in our ward yesterday. No doubt it was sung in hundreds of other LDS wards and branches. (link)

It’s clear Mormons believe in a Heavenly Mother. So why does she gets so little press? My colleague Cal Grondahl quips it’s because she left Heavenly Father a long time ago. Jokes aside, it may because my faith’s doctrine teaches, or has taught, that while there’s only one Heavenly Father, there’s a lot of Heavenly Mothers. In an earlier blog, I visited an 1853 edition of the LDS publication, The Millennial Star, with an article where “Abby” tries to persuade “Nelly” to the virtues of polygamy. (link) “Abby” argues, “… Now if God is appointing His sons on the earth to fill thrones and occupy many principalities, and my husband means to be as worthy to fill thrones as others, then I will be content to share with him one throne, and rejoice at the same time to see others share with him other thrones, while my capacity will not allow me to share any more than my own. …”

Blogger Joanna Brooks talked about a hoped-for Heavenly Mother resurgence in a blog last year (Read) It hasn’t occurred in the chapels, although there’s a very interesting discussion about our maternal goddess here. BYU Studies published an excellent piece on Heavenly Mother’s relevance in Mormonism that can be accessed here...is Heavenly Mother a headache for Heavenly Father? It’s an interesting question. I’d sure like to hear more about her in church. My guess is that the constant fears about revisiting Mormonism’s fascinating history is why there is this “sacred silence,” as some have called it.

Heavenly Mother was talked about in LDS churches long go, whether by Brigham Young, BH Roberts, etc. What many don’t realize is that Mormonism was once a progressive, eccentric religion that shocked everyone. Much of that history has been toned down, to put it mildly, the past few generations. In fact, a generation ago, members were urged by the church’s First Presidency not to talk about Heavenly Mother. Some believe that was a reaction by church leaders worried about feminist efforts to harness Heavenly Mother.

So, is Heavenly Mother a headache for Heavenly Father? It’s an interesting question. I’d sure like to hear more about her in church. My guess is that the constant fears about revisiting Mormonism’s fascinating history is why there is this “sacred silence,” as some have called it. The doctrine of polygamy, eternal life, godhood, and eternal worlds leads to the conclusions that God is dealing with scores, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of “Heavenly Mothers.”

Nevertheless, My Heavenly Mother, even if she shares my Heavenly Father with a lot of other spouses, is a god. I’d like to learn more about her before I have an opportunity to meet her personally. I bet She can handle it.

From the column -- written by a Mormon: BYU Studies published an excellent piece on Heavenly Mother’s relevance in Mormonism that can be accessed here.

When you click on the summary for this article, you find this BYU-sponsored sentence: Contrary to criticism in some quarters, Church leaders have not relegated this deity to a confined role. Statements from the late 1840s onward show that leaders and influential Latter-day Saints have explored her roles as a fully divine being, a creator of worlds with the Father, a coframer of the plan of salvation, and a concerned and involved parent of her children on earth.

There ya go...The Mormons have a "sexy goddess" and they know it...but they still are keeping her roles as co-creators of the worlds and coframer of the plan of salvation kind of under some (not total) wraps from the rest of the "public"...part of their "milk before meat" bait & switch tactics.

Mormon columnist Doug Gibson confirms the "under-wraps" approach with this graph: Heavenly Mother was talked about in LDS churches long go, whether by Brigham Young, BH Roberts, etc. What many don’t realize is that Mormonism was once a progressive, ECCENTRIC religion that SHOCKED EVERYONE. Much of that history has been toned down, to put it mildly, the past few generations. In fact, a generation ago, members were urged by the church’s First Presidency not to talk about Heavenly Mother.

(Yeah, just wait til the MSM and the Obama minions get hold of all the shocking details which they will parade before voters in the Summer & Fall of 2012...The BBC was already doing it this week for a mostly European audience...: An Englishwoman's view of The Mormon Candidate documentary on BBC tonight

From the column: The doctrine of polygamy, eternal life, godhood, and eternal worlds leads to the conclusions that God is dealing with scores, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of “Heavenly Mothers.” Nevertheless, My Heavenly Mother, even if she shares my Heavenly Father with a lot of other spouses, is a god.

There-ya-go...Romney supporters of America...Figures that ya wanna get him in the White House so that he and his legion of Mormon PR agents can train our younger generation that there's really "scores, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of 'Heavenly Mothers'" married as goddesses to a Mormon Polygamist god with quite a sexual appetite...a god that Romney will pray to whenever a crisis hits America.

And, given that there's no such polygamist god in heaven...so much for having such a non-existent god bail out a would-be Romney White House resident.

Correct me if I am wrong but here is more blasphemy. According to Mormonism, Mary united with God the Father and Our Lord was born. That’s not Christian teaching, it’s blasphemy.

Yup. Continue reading. Mormon general authorities...in their own words on the matter:

Example: Some LDS leaders have tried to play it both ways re: describing Mary as a virgin (for example, LDS apostle Bruce R. McConkie). Some clearly implied that she wasn’t (Brigham Young)

Example of LDS saying Mary was a virgin: "Modernistic teachings denying the virgin birth are utterly and completely apostate and false." (Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, page 822. [A CARM writer’s comment to this was: Let them proclaim it. But quite honestly, I fail to see how the Mormon people can assert that Mary remained a virgin in light of this evidence from their prophets and apostles. I see them saying two different things and backpedaling trying to sound Christian.]

Let’s deal with each of those descriptions separately, shall we?

”Literal”:

”The birth of the Savior was a natural occurrence unattended with any degree of mysticism, and the Father God was the literal parent of Jesus in the flesh as well as in the spirit." (Lds "prophet" Joseph Fielding Smith, Religious Truths Defined, p. 44)

“…Christ was born into the world as the literal Son of this Holy Being; he was born in the same personal, real, and literal sense that any mortal son is born to a mortal father. There is nothing figurative about his paternity; he was begotten, conceived and born in the normal and natural course of events, for he is the Son of God, and that designation means what it says. (McConkie Mormon Doctrine, p. 742, 1966)

Did ya'll catch the conception part here being discussed as part of a “normal and natural course of events” process? Was McConkie just making that up out of thin air? No. He was simply repeating what earlier LDS “prophets” have said about this “natural process”:

...same physical sense that any other man begets a child...:

Brigham Young:

“God…created man [as spirit children], as we create our children: for there is no other process of creation in heaven, on the earth, in the earth, or under the earth, or in all eternities, that is, that were, or that ever will be.” Journal of Discourses (JoD), vol. 11, p. 122

(OK, Young's quote here = absolute statement that God only has one means of creation, and that the spirit, Jesus, was first “created” in heaven through the same process “as we create our children”).

“The birth of the Savior was as natural as are the births of our children; it was the result of natural action. He partook of flesh and blood—was begotten of his Father, as we were of our fathers.” (JoD vol. 8, p. 115)

(Of course, if any poster wants to tell us that they were begotten of their fathers in some other manner that their fathers who ”partook of flesh and blood”--anything other than what Young called a “natural action”--we’ve got listening ears)

“When the time came that His first-born, the Saviour, should come into the world and take a tabernacle, the Father came Himself and favoured that spirit with a tabernacle instead of letting any other man do it.” (JoD, vol. 4, p. 218, 1857)

What was Brigham meaning? “When the Virgin Mary conceived the child Jesus, the Father had begotten him in his own likeness. He was not begotten by the Holy Ghost. And who is the Father? He is the first of the human family; and when he took a tabernacle, it was begotten by his Father in heaven.” (JoD vol. 1, p. 50, April 9, 1852)

What did Brigham mean by "who is the Father?...first of the human family?”

”Jesus, our elder brother, was begotten in the flesh by the same character that was in the garden of Eden, and who is our Father in Heaven. Now, let all who may hear these doctrines, pause before they make light of them, or treat them with indifference, for they will prove their salvation or damnation…Now remember from this time forth, and for ever, that Jesus Christ was not begotten by the Holy Ghost.” (Millennial Star, Vol. 15, p. 770, 1853)

What other LDS “prophets” embraced Brigham’s “natural process” of begottening?

“…As the horse, the ox, the sheep, and every living creature, including man, propogates its own species & perpetuates its own kind, so does God perpetuate His.” (Lds "prophet" John Taylor, Mediation & Atonement, 1882, p. 165 )

What about other LDS apostles? What did they say about this natural process?

"In relation to the way in which I look upon the works of God and his creatures, I will say that I was naturally begotten; so was my father, and also my saviour Jesus Christ. According to the Scriptures, he is the first begotten of his father in the flesh, and there was nothing unnatural about it." (LDS apostle Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, v. 8, p. 211)

"Christ was begotten by an Immortal Father in the same way that mortal men are begotten by mortal fathers" (LDS apostle Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 1966, p. 547.)

Now I’ve cited McConkie twice, and a lot of folks have seen one or both of those quotes, but not nearly as many have seen this following McConkie excerpt…where McConkie makes sure we otherstand the literalness of what’s he talking about:

“We have spoke PLAINLY of our Lord’s conception in the womb of Mary. I am the son of my father and the father of my sons. They are my sons because they were begotten by me, were conceived by their mother, and came forth from her womb to breathe the breath of mortal life, to dwell for a time and a season among other mortal men. And so it is with the Eternal Father and the mortal birth of the Eternal Son. The Father is a Father is a Father…And the Son is a Son is a Son…a literal, living offspring from an actual Father. God is the Father; Christ is the Son. The one begat the other. Mary provided the womb from which the Spirit Jehovah came forth, tabernacled in clay, as all men are, to dwell among his fellow spirits whose births were brought to pass in like manner. There is no need to spiritualize away the plain meaning of the scriptures. There is nothing figurative or hidden or beyond comprehension in our Lord’s coming into mortality. He is the Son of God in the same sense and way that we are the sons of mortal fathers. It is that simple. Christ was born of Mary. He is the Son of God—the Only Begotten of the Father. (McConkie, The Promised Messiah, pp. 467-468, 1978 )

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