10/23/2011 Visiting a Church of Latter Day Saints
In a previous thread, a Mormon poster challenged me to visit a Mormon service.
I enjoy religious services, and had never been to a Mormon one, so I went to one this Sunday. No, I won’t be going every week for 6 months. But I went to one, and may return for a 1st of the month" service sometime.
I hope it’s okay calling it “Mormon” – folks in the service sort of implied that was offensive or disrepectful, but folks here seem to use the term, and it’s a lot shorter to type than “Latter Day Saints” (and isn’t easy to confuse with the name of a drug). If you want me to change it, let me know and I will.
Three congregations meet at the local facility, at 9, 11, and 1 (although the website says 9, 11, and 11) and I went to the convenient 11:00 service and the first hour of Sunday school.
It really didn’t feel like a Christian service to me, although I wouldn’t say it is entirely outside the range of what I might expect in a Christian service. But it felt very different from any other Christian service I happen to have been to. The hour of Sunday school felt much more Christian.
The architecture was plain and modern. The sanctuary had some features that looked “imposing”, like a bank, but more ornamental. I guess a lot of vertical lines. Most of the room was taken up by comfortable pews, with a block in the center and two wings. I estimate the pews could have held about 200 people, and there were perhaps 120 there. In the front was a raised platform, sloping gently up as it moved to the front of the room. It held about 50 individual sets facing the pews, a lectern, and an organ. Oddly, there were only 6 people (counting the organist) in those 50 seats. I asked and was told that was for the choir, but it was a volunteer choir that usually didn’t meet. There was no cross, not even beams on the front of the lectern in a vaguely cross-like pattern. There was a sign at the top of the platform telling us which songs would be sung this week.
I got there a little late and walked in with a young couple. They promptly “adopted” me and invited me to sit with them, so I did. She whispered helpful stuff about what was going on from time to time.
It was the youngest congregation of any type I have ever seen. There were little kids everywhere. As soon as I sat down a baby behind me grabbed my hair and started playing with it until her mom pulled her away. A baby in front of my flirted with me throughout the service. The family to my left had a little boy and a toddler, and at one point I removed the little boy’s pencil from the hand of the toddler, who was about to stab the man in front of him. (The toddler wasn’t being aggressive, he was just playing, and was too young to realize he shouldn’t poke people with pencils.) There was so much “kid noise” that sometimes it was hard to hear the speaker, even though I was only about 3 rows from the front. I didn’t notice any children as old as 10, and there were only a few older adults. Most everyone was either a 20-something adult or a child under age 8. I’m sure that isn’t true of every Mormon congregation, but I mention it because that might affect how this one is run.
One thing that really struck me was that there was almost no liturgy. I come from a liturgical tradition, and liturgy is one of the things I enjoy at religious services.
When I got there the speaker was finishing up some announcements. Then he told the congregation that a couple of people had been called to service in the church (a woman as a babysitter in the nursery, and a man as something I didn’t quite catch) and he asked the congregation to vote on whether the spirit moved them to confirm these callings. Most of the adults raised their hands in affirmation, and no one voted “no”.
Next a woman gave an opening prayer, asking that we could all listen and benefit from the service. She did this with her eyes closed and it seemed to be free-form, rather than a standard (liturgical) prayer.
I may have the elements slightly out of order, but early on there was a prayer that was explicitly for the current church prophet, as well as some other people. That was perhaps the part that felt weirdest to me.
I think next was a hymn, then they passed around the sacrament (bread and water), and then another hymn. The bread and water were blessed by a young man who asked Christ to help all the people who partook of it, but it was obviously symbolic, with no transubstantiation going on. In fact, I asked the woman next to me about transubstantiation, and she asked me what the word meant. The bread was just an ordinary loaf of good bakery bread broken into little pieces, and the water was served in tiny dixie cups. Passing around the sacrament took a lot of time, and parents played with their kids and kids made a lot of noise during this bit.
Next up were testimonies from two men, each followed by a hymn that reflected the topic of their testimony. (So, 4 hymns total) They appeared to be random members of the congregation, and not people who were used to public speaking. They were each quite personal. The first spoke of feeling the spirit of Christ in the voices of various people (all latter day saints, except the last, who was a leader on the Nation of Islam) and compared that to being near Christ. The second spoke about how reading the Book of Mormon strengthened his faith. Both made a point of saying how they were really Christian, and the church is really Christian, and they were hurt when people believed otherwise.
While I understand why Mormons might feel defensive about that, it is really bizarre to have people arguing the case that they are really and truly Christian in a church. In a traditional church people will sometimes talk about how they wish they were more Christian, or urging others to be more Christian, or even testify about feeling the Spirit. But they don’t talk about how “hey, I really am a Christian, honest”. And, as a non-Christian, I observe that most of the evidence they gave of their Christian-ness" was just evidence of spirituality or religiousness, and could have been shared by a member of any other faith who happened to use the word “Christ” for “God”.
After that there was a little more administrative stuff, and we disbanded. No bible readings, nothing that really felt like a sermon, and as I mentioned before, no liturgy outside of the 4 hymns. I was surprised how little the congregation sang. My Reform Jewish congregation does better, even though most of our songs are in Hebrew and most of the congregation doesn’t know Hebrew. I guess they were all busy caring for their offspring.
As the service ended, I was invited by the couple to Sunday school. They volunteered in the nursery, so when I said I was interested, they passed me off to one of the half-dozen older women, who took me to that.
That seemed more traditionally Christian. We split into 4 groups and read bits of Hebrews, and then talked as a group about the themes of faith in the text, and about how Christ’s being human gave him empathy, and how faith and empathy spanned the gap between mankind and God. They didn’t even mention during Sunday school that God and Jesus are different people, although that had come up during the service.
[aside]I also learned why Christians always seem to think a blood sacrifice is needed for forgiveness of sin. (The Torah is quite clear that a proper sin offering is based on the resources of the sinner. A rich man should sacrifice a young bull, but a very poor man should sacrifice a portion of grain. So blood is only needed if you can afford it.) Paul says so, in his letter to the Hebrews. Go figure.[/aside]
Some guy gave me a loaf of bread as a gift for having visited. Everyone was very friendly. I wasn’t approached by anyone who was explicitly a missionary. Several people asked why I was there, and I told them that I lived in the area, and was something of a religious tourist, and was curious about their service. They all urged me to return. Some pointed out that I’d come to the service for people a few towns away, and the service for my town was one of the other services (they weren’t sure which one.)
So, that’s pretty much it.