Dangermom has already addressed this very nicely, but I’ll just add me $0.02 here. After all, it’s my thread you’re pooping in, not hers.
It’s true that, to reach the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom, “exaltation,” a woman must be married. This is vital because exaltation is the state of being a deity yourself, capable of producing spirit children and populating your own created world with them. It only stands to reason that a woman couldn’t do that without a man. Likewise, a man cannot achieve exaltation without a woman. There’s nothing inherently sexist about this idea, and it seems as though that’s what you’re getting at.
Now if you want to claim that polygamy is inherently sexist, go right ahead (and let me hold the door for you!), but exaltation itself is not.
Officially, Mormon men were ordered by the Church to dissolve all plural marriages. In practice, they did no such thing. Living arrangements stayed basically as they were, and within a generation of no new plural marriages being performed, the practice died out naturally. I mean, some of these guys had five or six wives. To cast them out and stop providing for them would be at least as cruel as marrying them in the first place.
You can get a free copy from the www.lds.org if you like, but the idea of 1/3 of the host of heaven leaving with Satan is straight form the Bible, the book of Revelation to be precise.
What the Mormons have done is flesh the idea out. This actually comes from the Pearl of Great Price, another book of Mormon scripture. Basically, before the world was formed, there was a council in heaven. Everyone who would ever be born into the world was there. Two plans were submitted. Jesus Christ came forward and said to send people to the earth and let them prove their faith and obedience by giving them free will. Because of the fact that even the best among us would eventually, sin, he offered himself as a savior to the world, meaning he would suffer the punishment for our sins if we would repent of them. Then Satan came forward with another plan, one in which people would be sent to the earth with no free will. He said that everyone would obey perfectly and be saved, and for this, he (Satan) should receive the glory. God chose Jesus’ plan. Satan was enraged and left, taking with him 1/3 of those present. The other 2/3, those who stayed with God, have been born and are being born into the world in accordance with Jesus’ plan. Satan’s 1/3, having forsaken their opportunity to be born and receive physical bodies, are now evil spirits trying to tempt, deceive and even possess us. Creepy stuff.
Mormons celebrate the same holidays as most Protestants, but not Catholics – there’s no Lent, no days for saints, etc. The only unusual one is Pioneer Day, July 24th, which commemorates the arrival of the Mormon pioneers in Salt Lake Valley.
Not exactly. The LDS church has its own charities for external charity work. The Relief Society’s charity work is more small-scale and internal; e.g., if you were Mormon and were laid up in the hospital, your local RS would take charge of making sure meals were delivered to your family and your kids got to and from school OK.
Amazing at it might be, Pat Robertson himself has said that C’tian missionaries going into a polygamous culture have no business telling converts they must dissolve their polygamous marriages, BUT should recommend against any further such marriages, till the practice dies out. He related several instances of C’tian missionaries being killed by the fathers & brothers of divorced/dishonored plural wives & added (re the missionaries) “Served 'em right!”
Within five minutes, he went from that somewhat remarkably enlightened perspective to a medieval-style warning against masturbation making one vulnerable to demons. (it was Q&A time- which accounts for the switch change of subjects).
I actually was on the sidelines of a “Manifest Sonship” (New Age Pentecostal) group which taught that we were those fallen angels who accepted the opportunity for salvation.
Now, out of the LDS account of the pre-mortal angelic war, comes an even creepier bit of unofficial “folk doctrine” about the fate of the non-Satanic but less valiant spirits.
I’d like to expand on this one, if I might. The RS was originally founded as a society for the women, with the focus on relief of the poor (of which there were many in the Church, since at this time there were a lot of people leaving home to join, and the members were frequently harassed and so on). They have always had a lot of charitable-endeavor stuff going on; in early Utah they did a large portion of the medical work (there was a program that sent women to medical and nursing schools, and they would come back and teach themselves), and they grew a lot of wheat–a lot went off to Europe after WWI–and a lot of other stuff.
Now that the LDS Church has the Humanitarian Aid and the Welfare programs, a lot of that work has moved over, but the RS is still involved with them. Welfare in a congregation is largely the joint responsibility of the RS president and the bishop, RS members do a lot of the above-mentioned local work like meals/cleaning/transport, and most RS’s will have several Humanitarian nights every year, where they produce a lot of stuff to be shipped out.
However, RS has also always been a society that aims for sisterhood, companionship, spiritual uplift, education, and some fun. So there’s all that too. I’m currently running the RS book club in my ward, for example.
Well, that was longer than I meant it to be. Sorry. I didn’t realize I had so much to say!
Are there any circumstances where sealings or temple ordinances could be conducted outside a Temple? Like if there’s no access to a Temple (say Mormons living in a country with no Temple and unable to leave)? How do fundamentalist Mormon sects handle it? Aren’t most of their beliefs that same as 19th century Mormons?
In the very early days of the Church, there was a building, known as the Endowment House, where these ordinances took place. These days, however, the ordinances must take place in a temple. If you like in a country with no temple, you get to save up and travel, or wait until they build one closer to you. I served my mission in Ecuador, which had no temple at the time. The well-off members traveled to Peru, and the less-well-off members waited and prayed. There’s a temple in Ecuador now.
As far as the fundie sects go, the Community of Christ is big enough that they have their own temple. The smaller cough psycho cough sects, AFAIK, consecrate any old building and perform their ceremonies there.
This thread was living a happy and productive life, but once a thread gets above three pages, people start to post into it without reading the thread first.
Yep, I’m sad. This is the first decently long thread I’ve started since I Pitted people who don’t donate blood, and unlike that one, this thread has actually fought some ignorance.
Not a question, but a comment. My sister, who has Parkinson’s, converted to LDS a few years back, and I am so incredibly grateful to what the church is doing for her; she lives clear across the country from me so it’s not easy for me to help her out directly.
In the two years after she could no longer work but before she could get disability, I never had to worry about her going hungry; the food bank was available to her – and she stlil uses it, since her disability income barely even covers her rent on a teensy apartment now; she’s asked to “work” for the food she receives, but it’s always been a task perfectly suited to her abilities. (Like right now she helps a young mom with a bunch of kids clean her house once a week.) She’s up to her eyeballs in activities; a real problem for Parkinson’s folks is a tendency to isolate, but her ward has absolutely no problem with her tremors and all, and keeps her as busy as she is able to be.
It’s not a belief system I could subscribe to personally, but I have to say that when it comes time for the rubber to meet the road, the Mormons I’ve known have done far better job of living the major tenets of their faith than most people. And I’m personally grateful now for all the church is doing for my sister. Your RS work really pays off, dangermom!
