Thanks for the link to the Slate article. I’m betting it’s a bit too “inside baseball” for a non-Mormon audience but it’s very well done. Mormonism has always relied on a tremendous amount of insularity to protect its membership from outside objective sources. That’s why you have intelligent Mormons who can get advanced degrees at Ivy League universities, but will completely turn off their mind on the subject of Mormonism. The Church always stresses that the only true reliable info on church history comes from them and any outside sources are anti-Mormon propaganda.
I think this is lessening in the Internet age (though I haven’t been to church in a long time so I’m not sure) but still you’ll see Mormons show up occasionally here and have a conniption when they see an objective non-Sunday School discussion of the church.
Anyway, D. Michael Quinn is a hero of Mormon scholarship and it’s a shame that ostensibly public universities have allowed religiously motivated individuals to have veto power over his employment. Sad and disturbing.
Slight tangent based on this quoted fragment. When you live in the middle east, and don’t have refrigeration or pasteurization and bottling technology, how can you keep your grape juice from fermenting more than a week after harvest? You can’t. That’s why you make wine. To preserve the stuff. That’s why the ‘mistranslation’ explanation is obvious bullshit. Pet peeve of mine that pisses me off every time I hear that.
I’m at work right now and can’t research it. But it was talked about all the time when I was growing up. I believe Joseph Smith said one day the U.S. government would “hang by a thread” and at that point the church would step in and take control. Oh here it is: White Horse Prophecy - Wikipedia
I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be after the apocalypse the CoJCLDS takes over the country (the world, really) and rules in God’s name, at least that’s how my friends have always stated it. Which is a much less radical position since I think pretty much every church thinks they’ll be the One True Church after the apocalypse.
Yes, this is much closer to the truth. The White Horse Prophecy is more Mormon folklore than anything else, not established doctrine. (But yes, I heard about it a lot growing up, but note that Mormons will supposedly SAVE the Constitution, not replace it with theocracy.)
The Mormon Theocracy will occur much later when the Apocalypse is happening.
No, this was said around the time Joseph Smith was trying to run for president of the United States. And Mormons today, including my parents, believe that the church will save the union and implement a theocracy. I know it’s not official church doctrine, but that does not stop true believers from thinking about it and talking about it and agreeing with the idea.
Well, I can’t refute your experience but only add my own. My parents are also convinced that “Mormons will rescue the Constitution” but I never assumed that rescuing the Constitution would involve destroying it in favor of theocracy. The idea just doesn’t make sense. The Constitution enshrines elections, not theocracy. And as you must well know, Mormons fetishize the Founding Fathers and believe they were all inspired of God. I just don’t see where the theocracy comes into it.
Whereas other religions are based on historiographies which are so ancient and poorly substantiated that they can’t be shown to be true or false.
The LDS has the misfortune of being both based on ludicrous stories AND being new enough that reasonable people can ask “Cite?”. If Joseph Smith (assuming a much earlier colonization) had lived in New York 1000 years ago, his just so stories about the natives would be as mainstream as the Baptists are today.
You are right: Mormons are crazy about the Constitution. They think it’s an inspired document and all that. But a theocracy would replace it, for certain. Freedom of expression would be severely curtailed, in all likelihood. Just like how Joseph Smith destroyed a printing press that was run by anti-Mormons in whatever town in Missouri or Illinois or Ohio back then…
I’ll note that Joseph Smith seemed enamored with Columbus, writing an allusion to him into the Book of Mormon, but the Constitution and Founding Father worship seems to stem from the much later Wilford Woodruff era. It may be significant that this is the same era when the White Horse Prophecy first emerges.
I think this would be a good idea to explore in a term paper or Master’s thesis: when the Mormon church reached its nadir in reputation and relationship with the larger United States and its federal government (1880s), that’s when Woodruff had his “vision” of the Founding Fathers in the St. George temple. It seems plausible that he was trying to reconcile the anti-American feelings of his flock with their inevitable non-polygamous future within the U.S. The Founding Fathers and Constitution were safely in the past (pre-Mormon era) and thus could be venerated without hard feelings.
Erdosain that seems very reasonable to me. Joseph Smith certainly had grandiose ideas. In one of his writings he compared himself to Mohammad, and asserted that he would put all of his enemies under his heel.
The St. George temple is where I received my “endowment.” My grandfather was a temple worker there, so he performed the ceremony personally. His own grandfather was a close associate of Brigham Young. With so much Mormon history in my family I feel sad that the religion is just a big load of horse shit, but that’s what it is.
All the ones I’ve met are, at least in public and semi-private. It’s part of the socialization and basic lifestyle.
Lots of other very fundamentalist or pentacostal Christians are extremely perky and happy also. It’s considered a totally valid form of testimony to show the benefits of being a Christian. Conversely, if you’re *not *happy, you’re strongly encouraged to put a sock in it and focus on how other people have it worse, and that God loves you and you have a responsibility to fake it til you make it by focusing on other people and how to help them. This is important because you’re saved and held to a higher standard than “self-centered” people.
I think the Duggars have mentioned the philosophy on TV also: Check out the reason for their JOYin life. :rolleyes:
