Every blessing we have is predicated upon a law. You break the law, the blessing is gone.

There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated— And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated. (D&C 130: 20-21)²

One must be intelligent not to confuse administrative actions with the Gospel of Jesus Christ (i.e. truth) in its purest mode. There is a different between administration of earthly issues, the Truth of the Gospel, and, and what I call the “Doctrine of the Culture,” that some people cling to instead of the doctrine.

As a Mormon, I struggled with the legalistic LDS belief that all blessings a person receives from God are actually dependent upon his or her obedience to a specific Law (or body of Laws) of Heaven.  The reason I struggled is that I could never pin down exactly what the Law was, despite the fact that I was desperate to follow it.  (That seems to be a common theme in the LDS Church.) I studied the teachings of Mormon prophets over the 150+ year life of the LDS Church and found that certain Laws (or doctrines) they emphasized as “eternal” and “fundamental” to God’s plan for humanity had changed over time.  This was very distressing to me, as I had been taught my whole life that God’s Laws are eternal and unchanging, because they are based on Truth, which is eternal.  I was taught that the doctrines of Mormonism embody the sum of those unchanging Laws.  Clearly, however, doctrines had been changing and evolving the whole time.³

Once I realized this was the case, the contradiction between reality and what I had been taught and always believed about the LDS Church caused me to lose much of my confidence in the Church as the one true organization of God on Earth. I tried to figure out ways to reconcile the contradictions, trying to make distinctions between them that allowed both to be true at the same time.  My mind was working in ways similar to Deep Throat above, conceptually separating “doctrine” and “Truth” from “Mormon culture” and “folklore” in an effort to define the consistent Laws in LDS teachings upon which all blessings are predicated.⁴  Despite my best efforts, I was largely unsuccessful at convincing myself that the contradictions weren’t really contradictions, and that there was a consistent Law of the Gospel buried in Mormon beliefs.

When the believers in my family learned of my confusion, they pulled all of the strings they could to get me some help.  They put me in contact with Max Anderson, an LDS apologist, who had published a book defending mainstream LDS beliefs by deconstructing Mormon Fundamentalist claims to divine authority.  Max and his wife were very kind to me, and they had me over to their house on several occasions to sit in their living room and talk through my concerns.  A few times, Max invited other apologists to join us and discuss issues they had researched.  These meetings presented me with various ways of parsing the contradictions so that they made more sense.

One meeting in particular really blew my mind.  At that meeting, Eldon Watson, who had compiled a book of Brigham Young’s writings, attempted the mindbending feat of explaining how everything Brigham Young taught is in harmony with mainstream LDS beliefs about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I was flabbergasted to learn that what made it all fit together for him was to draw a distinction between “LDS doctrine” and ”Truth”.  The key, he explained, is to understand that Truth is eternal and unchanging, but LDS doctrine is only an expression of the Church’s acknowledged beliefs at a specific moment in time.  Thus, LDS doctrine when Brigham Young was alive included polygamy as a requirement to get into the highest part of heaven, but current LDS doctrine does not.

This idea was shocking to me because, despite its (semi)effectiveness as a logical solution to the problem of contradiction in authoritative LDS teachings, the concept is clearly heretical.  All LDS Church leaders I know of, and regular members alike, have talked about LDS doctrine as embodying “the fullness of the Gospel”.  Any past changes have been carefully characterized as adding more previously unrevealed Truth to the doctrine, because Truth is what LDS doctrine is all about.  Watson was explaining that doctrine freely changes with the needs of the Church at the given moment–things that are Truth, like the divine nature of polygamy, can be taken out and disavowed.

I’m pretty sure that Watson, in offering up his idea, was mainly just trying to accommodate the fact that Church President Gordon B. Hinckley had recently blurted out, on international television, that polygamy is not doctrinal⁵ when it had clearly been doctrinal (though not always practiced) during the previous 100+ years of LDS Church existence.  I think, however, that drawing a distinction between doctrine and Truth is just an apologetic invention, and has never been part of Church teachings. As far as I know, President Brigham Young never made that distinction, and Apostle Boyd K. Packer (currently the next in line to be President of the Church) doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo either, because he has taught that Some things cannot be changed. Doctrine cannot be changed. And understandably so.  Malleable doctrine undermines the authority of Church leaders, because it means that at least sometimes what they teach is not the real Truth, and therefore need not be obeyed.  This is also the reason why Mormons almost never admit (with any specificity) that Church leaders make mistakes.  Changing doctrine is just a slow-motion mistake.

Funny, though, because now that I have apostatized, I agree with Elden Watson.

-PWM

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1. Yeah, the irony of an apparently straight-laced Mormon naming him or herself Deep Throat hasn’t escaped me.  I assume the name is referring somehow to the Watergate informant, rather than the classic porn movie from which the informant’s pseudonym was derived.  Then again, either reference is kind of random.
2. By the way, this section of the Doctrine & Covenants (which is LDS scripture on par with the Bible or the Book of Mormon) is a treasure trove of canonized Mormon oddities, like Joseph Smith’s unfulfilled prediction about growing unrest in the American South (that eventually developed into the Civil War) being a precursor to the second coming of Jesus Christ, his cautiously hedged prediction that Jesus Christ’s second coming would happen prior to his 85th birthday (1890), his explanation for why the Holy Ghost is incorporeal, his insight into the planets that God and the angels live on, his view of what the afterlife is generally like, and other fun stuff.  Definitely worth a read, since these things are part of the “meat” of the Gospel that Mormons don’t share with outsiders very often (the “milk” always comes first).
3. For example, the importance of polygamy in attaining the highest glory in the Celestial Kingdom, the meaning and importance of Doctrine & Covenants 89 (the “Word of Wisdom”), the role of Blood Atonement in the Gospel, the meaning and importance of Joseph Smith’s First Vision, the role of seer stones and other implements of folk magic in the Gospel, the role and meaning of race in determining worthiness to hold the Priesthood, the ancestral origins of the American Indians, the location of lands and people featured in Book of Mormon, the eternal and unchanging nature of LDS temple ceremonies and other Priesthood ordinances, etc.
4. I never went as far as Deep Throat has, however, in making distinctions between “administration of earthly issues” and “the Gospel of Jesus Christ (i.e. truth) in its purest mode”, probably because that contradicts the basic Mormon belief that God doesn’t give any exclusively “earthly” rules–they are all applicable to spiritual matters (see D& C 29:34-35).
5. Larry King: You condemn it [polygamy].

   Gordon B. Hinckley: I condemn it, yes, as a practice, because I think it is not doctrinal. It is not legal. And this church takes the position that we will abide by the law. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, magistrates in honoring, obeying and sustaining the law.

   –1998 Larry King interview of Gordon B. Hinckley, prophet and President of the LDS Church

Mormon Woman Wondering asked:

Please help me understand how you bore the gut-hole created by losing your faith.

I am not sure I understand what “gut-hole” means in this context. I have some guesses: Is it the psychological turmoil a person goes through when the philosophical basis for her lifestyle and choices is revealed to be deeply flawed and unreliable, and needs to be replaced? Is it the anxiety that accompanies the realization that she doesn’t know what to replace it with? Is it the nagging worry that she has set her children up to fail–to trust people and ideas that are not trustworthy? Is it the disappointment at finding that so much of her life has been spent earnestly pursuing and investing in what is ultimately a high-stakes fantasy?

I think I relate to each of these possibilities, but the intensity of my experience has probably been tempered by the fact that I could never really fully commit to the social aspects of the LDS Church. I grew up in Salt Lake City, but never went to a stake dance, never attended a single’s ward, and never had friendships that started at church. In fact, a large proportion of my friends were not active members of the Church, and I spent my weekends with a mother who left the Church when I was four years old. The social experience was not why I went to Church every week, so changing my mind about Mormonism didn’t require much of a change in my lifestyle (i.e., I didn’t lose any important social outlets, business relationships, etc.). As an adult, I went to church in an effort to test and prove Mormonism as an exceptional and holy way of life–I lived my life as if Mormonism was everything it claimed to be, but I never forgot that I was making assumptions about it that needed to be confirmed. I also took a few years to gradually scale back my participation, and I left while my kids were small (all below 5 years old). I think all of that has taken an edge off of the angst that other people who stop believing have to deal with.

Even if my angst was tempered by the happy accident of my personality and life circumstances, I’ve still had my share of inner turmoil as I considered my terribly flawed reasons for making huge life decisions (marriage, kids, career, etc.), and the likelihood that they would turn out to be bad risks and huge mistakes. I’ve found a bit of comfort, however, in a very strange place (for a Mormon). In high school, I read Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse, and a central theme of the novel has always resonated with me: paths we take in life, things we commit to, choices we make, situations we find ourselves in, even if they end in disaster, are experiences that give us more insight into reality. Thus, neither successes nor failures are wasted experiences–we gain wisdom and understanding from both.¹ Once I accept that idea, it’s hard for me to get too worked up about having spent a couple of decades in an authoritarian religion. The experience taught me valuable lessons that apply to broader aspects of humanity (business organizations, government, etc.), and have helped me better understand how the world works.

-PWM

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1. Mormonism actually teaches a species of this concept too, in D&C 122:5-7.

When I had been proselyting as a missionary for just about three months, my Mission President (the volunteer LDS clergy supervising the activities of the entire mission) assigned me to work in a new city with a partner (i.e., a “companion”) who was in the final month of his two-year term of missionary service. The Mission President met with me to tell me I was chosen for the assignment because this missionary needed a faithful, enthusiastic companion to try a new method of proselyting that had the potential to usher in a surge of baptisms in the mission. It was called “Covenanting with the Lord”.

The idea behind Covenanting with the Lord was the fact that Heavenly Father has a system in place for helping people achieve their righteous goals. Jesus Christ touched on it in Luke 11:9-13 when he said “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” But for Mormons, the concept has another dimension–the Lord explicitly promises that if a person has faith in him, that person shall have power to do whatever “is expedient” for the Lord. And the Lord is obligated to make good on his promises when people hold up their end of the bargain. We had answered Jesus Christ’s call to be missionaries, so clearly our desire to be the best (i.e., “most successful”) missionaries we could be was expedient for him. All we had to do was properly ask for Heavenly Father’s help and demonstrate our unwavering faith in him. We would pray, asking Heavenly Father to send the Holy Ghost to tell us what we needed to do in order to strengthen and demonstrate our faith and invoke the Lord’s obligation to make us successful (i.e., “baptizing”) missionaries. Once the Holy Ghost told us what we needed to do, we just had to take up the challenge and covenant to do it, and the Lord would have to give us people to baptize.

I learned that the Mission President had taught the whole mission to follow this Covenanting with the Lord program just a couple of weeks before I had arrived in the mission, and my new companion had been one of his shining examples of success in following the program and finding people to baptize. Now the Mission President and my new comp were looking at me to get in gear and continue the process.

The day I arrived in my new apartment, my companion told me how the program worked, and how I needed to join him in covenanting with the Lord for baptisms. I needed to sit down with him and prayerfully determine (through the guidance of the Holy Ghost) how many Book of Mormons we needed to distribute, and how many missionary lessons (i.e., “discussions”) we needed to teach people each week in order to demonstrate the level of faith necessary to bind the Lord in granting us success.

I was honored that the Mission President had chosen me, of all the new missionaries, to take up the challenge. I was also taken aback by the audacity and ambition inherent in developing a formula for calling down the power of God to serve our desires as missionaries. It made sense to me, though–we were on the Lord’s errand, so he’s got to support us; this could be how.

My companion and I fasted for 24 hours, prayed, and wrote up a plan laying out, in addition to a commitment to be perfectly obedient to all mission rules, all of our performance goals for the next four weeks. Each week, we figured, our faith would need to increase, and that increased faith would show forth in increased statistics–more Book of Mormons given out, and more discussions taught. The first week contained pretty ambitious numbers, and each week those numbers increased, until, by the last week, the numbers were ridiculously high–equal to a month’s worth of work for most missionary companionships. This was my companion’s last month as a missionary, and he was going to go all out.

We prayed together for the Holy Ghost’s confirmation of our plan, and my companion received that confirmation. I, on the other hand, did not feel anything I considered communication from the Holy Ghost. My comp was absolutely convinced that our plan was right, and as the senior companion, he could have just told me to go along with it, but he was also convinced that the plan wouldn’t work if I wasn’t fully on board. We went back to our apartment and he waited in the front room while I retreated, plan in hand, to the study, where I was to pray until I got my answer.

After about 15 minutes of continuous pleading with the Lord for an answer, I started to feel a light, almost tingling sensation in my spine that grew into a wave that passed through my whole body. I took that as confirmation from the Holy Ghost that our plan was approved of the Lord, and his promise of success would have to be fulfilled as we completed our plan.

The details of the plan and how we went about completing it are the subject of another post, but for the purpose of this post, I’ll just say that we worked like crazy each week, meeting our goals–miraculously, it seemed, as the goals got bigger. The third week, we achieved our goal with five minutes to go before the end of the week. The Lord seemed to be helping us meet our goals–rewarding our faith and tenacious desire to do his will. The fourth week, we were worn down from weeks of non-stop working, but kept at it through the end. After giving our all, we were both very disappointed to find we had come up just barely short of our final week’s goals.

After covenanting with the Lord, we put up what were easily the biggest numbers of any companionship in the mission, but in the end, we baptized nobody during that month (not even close), had no additional serious investigators, and to my knowledge, nobody we met with during that month was baptized at some later date either. We had absolutely zero success, despite our testimony that our plan was a divinely approved path to baptisms. The Mission President never talked to me, or the rest of the mission, about Covenanting with the Lord again. It was abandoned as if it never existed.

-PWM

When I was 18 years old, I realized that I was mere months away from high school graduation, and that I was expected to follow through on my lifelong plan to go on a two-year mission for the LDS Church, during which time I would work to persuade people to join the Church. I decided that I should prepare for my mission by making an effort to learn more about the Church than I had learned in Sunday school and daily seminary classes.

I found a book on my dad’s bookshelf titled Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon. I thought that would be a great place for me to start supplementing my understanding, since the Book of Mormon–a key proselyting tool for LDS missionaries–is about the Semitic ancestors of the present-day Native Americans. I stood at the bookshelf thumbing through the book, and soon my excited curiosity turned to confusion, and then to alarm, as I realized that the author of the book was coming from the perspective that Joseph Smith had written the Book of Mormon himself, and that it wasn’t actually a literal history of the ancient American inhabitants merely discovered and translated by Joseph Smith. I was astonished that a scholarly book with that thesis could be published, since it seemed so mind-blowingly counter to all I had been taught about the “keystone of our religion”.

I immediately went and asked my dad about the book. Why did he have it? Did he believe its assertion that the Book of Mormon is not a product of divine intervention?

I know what you might be thinking. This is the part where my dad smiles at me and says “Congratulations son, you have just discovered one of the secrets we adults in the Church keep from the kids until they are ready to take the next step into adulthood. You are mature enough now to learn that there is actually no hard evidence substantiating Joseph Smith’s claims about the Book of Mormon–no ancient American artifacts pointing to the Semitic people described in the book, no proof that Joseph dug the plates out of the ground at the direction of an angel, and not even any evidence that Joseph Smith had the ability to translate ancient languages into English (in fact, he feigned that ability more than once, with disastrous results). Even if you aren’t convinced that the book is literally true, there are valuable lessons and principles in it that I hope have shaped your understanding of yourself and your culture, and have given you reference points for exploring and conceptualizing your newly-expanded world. I’m proud of you for autonomously reaching for knowledge beyond what you are spoon-fed, and I am certain that if you continue actively pursuing knowledge, you will reap great rewards throughout your life. Lets go grab dinner and celebrate. My treat.”

That’s not what happened. My dad seemed taken aback by my questions. He told me that he had read a lot of books contradicting the claims of Mormonism, but he had never read anything that overcame his feeling–his testimony–that the LDS Church is absolutely God’s one true church. My anxiety was assuaged to some extent just by the notion that my dad had faced down those competing theories about our religion, but was still convinced of its truth. I thought maybe I could still consider serving a mission, despite realizing that there was serious, reasoned (published) opposition to my worldview out there that I knew very little about. I wondered if, instead of engaging that opposition, I could simply pray to Heavenly Father and ask him to give me a testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, like my dad had.

I went to my room, closed the door, got down on my knees and prepared to pray for a long time. This wasn’t going to be easy. Anxiety and doubts kept coming over me in waves. I began the prayer, concentrating all of my energy on communicating with God. Then, suddenly, I couldn’t remember why I was praying. I knew that I had been very worked up and worried about something, but I just couldn’t remember what it was. The burden was gone; I felt free and light. I remember wiping the tears from my eyes and laughing out loud to myself about the whole crazy situation. I got in bed and went peacefully to sleep.

The next morning, I was able to remember the whole incident. I still had the same questions about the Book of Mormon, but they just didn’t seem as intense or important as before. I was a bit disappointed that I hadn’t had a stereotypical “Holy Ghost” feeling confirming the truth of the Book of Mormon, but then I remembered a passsage of scripture that seemed applicable. I opened Doctrine & Covenants 9:8-9:

8. But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.

9. But if it be not right you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong…

I read that and realized that I had been looking for a verse 8 “bosom shall burn within you” feeling confirming that the Book of Mormon was true, but when I forgot my worry that the Book of Mormon might not be true, I was actually having a verse 9 “stupor of thought” causing me to “forget the thing that was wrong”. I was very pleased and relieved to realize that I had gotten the message from the Holy Ghost, and could say that I had a testimony that the Book of Mormon was true. Whatever books were out there denying that fact could wait until I completed my mission.

-PWM

“Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it.”

Now, that’s pretty high praise coming from a Christian. Maybe a little too high? It is probably fair to say that this statement is just soaring, sentimentality-soaked hyperbole penned by someone mourning the loss of an admired leader and teacher.

At the same time, however, it is also fair to say that the LDS Church, by adopting the statement into its scriptural canon (see Doctrine & Covenants Sec. 135:3), singing hymns about Joseph Smith (see official LDS Hymns #26, Joseph Smith’s First Prayer, and #27, Praise to the Man), and extensively focusing on the favorable mythology surrounding Joseph Smith (see e.g., the Joseph Smith birthday commemoration web page, linking to an elaborate website dedicated to Joseph Smith), has elevated this sentiment to the level of mainstream LDS religious belief. This common belief is substantiated by the teachings of Brigham Young , which include the following (possibly also sentimentality-warped, but nonetheless extant and never officially disavowed) statement:

“…no man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter into the celestial kingdom of God without the consent of Joseph Smith. From the day that the Priesthood was taken from the earth to the winding-up scene of all things, every man and woman must have the certificate of Joseph Smith, junior, as a passport to their entrance into the mansion where God and Christ are—I with you and you with me. I cannot go there without his consent. He holds the keys of that kingdom for the last dispensation—the keys to rule in the spirit-world; and he rules there triumphantly, for he gained full power and a glorious victory over the power of Satan while he was yet in the flesh, and was a martyr to his religion and to the name of Christ, which gives him a most perfect victory in the spirit-world. He reigns there as supreme a being in his sphere, capacity, and calling, as God does in heaven. Many will exclaim—’Oh, that is very disagreeable! It is preposterous! We cannot bear the thought!’ But it is true.”

(JD, Vol. 7, p.287)

Unfortunately, mainstream members of the LDS Church not only feel pressure to believe that Joseph Smith is the greatest-man-ever-next-to-Jesus (and the gatekeeper of heaven), but also, for those who attempt to learn more about Joseph Smith through studying history, to reconcile that belief with growing evidence that Joseph Smith was a man of very questionable personal morals and ethics, willing to use the beliefs of others (particularly regarding eventual rewards in the afterlife), as well as his own position of ecclesiastical power, to further his personal interests.

For many members of the LDS Church today, this conflict over the character of Joseph Smith extends also to current leaders of the LDS Church, who claim authority–through Joseph Smith–to speak for God. As authorized spokesmen of God, the current LDS prophets and apostles, whose words and actions are often ethically and morally questionable themselves, are simply not (religiously) accountable to members of the Church. In fact, as Apostle Dallin H. Oaks has taught, LDS Church leaders are never to be criticized publicly by members of the Church. The only redress against abuse is to privately contact the offending apostle himself, or go over his head and privately contact the prophet about it. Not much of a feedback mechanism there (particularly if it is the prophet who is behaving badly). In the end, I suppose, these men eschew accountability to Church members for their actions because they feel they are called of God to interface with the people, not elected by the people to interface with God. (Also, they don’t want accountability because they are typical self-interested human beings, and they are lucky enough to be able to indulge that preference. JMO.)

However it technically works, the result is to place sincere, faithful members of the Church in the difficult position of excusing or ignoring nearly all of the bad leadership and abuse that they see perpetuated by these men in the name of God. Even for abuses perpetrated by middle managers in the Church organization (Stake Presidents and Bishops) there can be tremendous cultural and official pressure to just let it slide. For a particularly glaring example of this, CLICK HERE (long version) or HERE (short summary in last two paragraphs). The moral crisis this creates in the minds of members of the Church becomes a catalyst for apostasy, as people who have always cared deeply for, and taken very seriously, the Church, its leaders, and its teachings, are not able, in good conscience (and sometimes despite their sincere desire), to continue participating in the LDS faith community.

-PWM

My professor was in a bit of a bind, however, because Mormons today don’t have prophets who give out that kind of advice, and modern Mormons live in all sorts of different places–not strictly the agrarian communities of the western United States, so the 19th-century advice doesn’t fit reality very well. My professor, however, solved that problem by making his reality fit the advice. He bought land 3 hours away from campus, out in the middle of nowhere, and lived a 19th-century lifestyle there. He was dead serious about following the prophets and being right with God.

Most modern members of the LDS Church do not go to these lengths to heed prophetic advice. The common reason for this is that the living prophets trump the dead prophets, and therefore the way of life lived by the living prophets reflects the “right” way to live. The living prophets and apostles are former surgeons, newspapermen, car dealers, teachers, etc., so bread-baking advice that the Prophet Brigham Young gave in the year 18-whatever probably isn’t applicable anymore.

Probably.

The uncertainty embodied in that word is a major issue for Mormons who want to be sure they are living in full accordance with the will of God. To be on the safe side, some, like my professor, just go ahead and follow all of Brigham Young’s advice as if it was prophetic guidance from God. Most Mormons acknowledge that Brigham Young (and other past Church) were prophets of God, but they just arbitrarily pick and choose which advice they will take seriously enough to follow. Such pickers and choosers are, of course, never on completely safe ground. The clearest rule a Mormon has to work with in figuring out if a given statement from an LDS prophet is a revelation from God, or just some guy talking, is a statement made by the Prophet Joseph Smith himself (in his own defense against accusations of being a false prophet): “A prophet [is] a prophet only when he [is] acting as such.” (History of the Church, 5:265)

The question of when an LDS prophet is “acting as such” is the key issue for devout Mormons, and unfortunately something that neither the LDS Church nor any LDS prophets so far have had the inclination (or guts?) to opine on with any specificity. They simply refuse to say which “prophetic” advice from past prophets is or isn’t actually a message from God. I think they refuse because (a) they don’t know, and (b) doing so would confirm the possibility that LDS prophets sometimes think they are channeling the eternal will and mind of God, when they really aren’t, and that undermines the authority of both the dead prophets and themselves. Whatever the reason for it, the lack of official guidance on what prophetic advice to heed leaves some members of the Church with the sincere belief that a loaf of bread ought to be no thicker than two of Brigham Young’s hands, and that polygamy is the True form of marriage (even if it is not practiced by the LDS Church today).

Reverence for every word that has fallen from the lips of early Church prophets is something the modern LDS Church and the FLDS or other fundamentalist branches of Mormonism have in common. Both flavors of Mormonism are built on certainty about the nature of God, the purpose of life, the order of the universe, and the early prophets’ connection to God (though only the fundamentalists openly embrace the implications of that). When members of the LDS Church discover contradictions, ambiguities, or ridiculous bullshit in the teachings or policies of the early Church compared to that of the modern Church, their prophets and apostles offer no explanation (in fact, they don’t even acknowledge a conflict). And then those questioning members, in a sincere attempt to find answers, reach out and find the Mormon fundamentalists there waiting, happy to provide answers that bring the certainty back, and to take the questioning members out of the LDS Church. This connection–this path between mainstream Mormons and fundamentalist Mormons–is why the two movements continue to be so intertwined.

Modern leaders of the LDS Church, like the Prophet Gordon B. Hinckley in a 1998 interview with Larry King, don’t appear to perceive this connection. In fact, they seem to be altogether baffled by why people can’t clearly distinguish between mainstream Mormons and fundamentalist Mormons :

Larry King: But when the word ["polygamy"] is mentioned, when you hear the word, you think Mormon, right?

Gordon B. Hinckley: You do it mistakenly. [Fundamentalists] have no connection with us whatever. They don’t belong to the church. There are actually no Mormon fundamentalists.

***

Larry King: President Hinckley, when the press pays attention to [polygamy and Mormon fundamentalism], it does affect you, certainly, in a public relations sense?

Gordon B. Hinckley: It does, because people mistakenly assume that this church has something to do with it. It has nothing whatever to do with it. It has had nothing to do with it for a very long time. It’s outside the realm of our responsibility. These people are not members. Any man or woman who becomes involved in it is excommunicated from the church.

It isn’t really fair for Gordon B. Hinckley to say that the LDS Church has “nothing whatever to do with it”, when the Church leadership’s failure to disavow fundamentalist beliefs and past LDS Church practices has caused, and continues to cause, sincere believing Mormons to be curious about, or sometimes to silently support the illegal activities of fundamentalist Mormon churches. And the issue is not “outside the realm of [the Church's] responsibility,” since the Church bears responsibility for its continuing contribution to the situation.

For example, LDS Church doctrine has never been officially changed away from its polygamist roots (see e.g., the current version of the Doctrine & Covenants 132: 34-40 and 61-65); only the Church’s practice of polygamy has changed (and it hasn’t changed as much as people generally think, but that’s a topic for a future post). With that in mind, excommunicating somebody from the Church (or invoking other forms of discipline) for having been exposed as a participant in Mormon fundamentalism is an act filled with ambiguity, because it is unclear what that discipline means. Is the excommunication simply punishing people who are caught improperly practicing current LDS beliefs, or is the excommunication also supposed to say something about the beliefs themselves? Excommunication from the LDS Church can’t alter a person’s beliefs when the Church’s own scriptures still contain the voice of the Lord clearly declaring those beliefs to be correct.

If the LDS Church really wants to avoid the bad PR that comes with being connected to fundamentalist Mormons, then Church ought to revise its scriptures, have frank discussions with its members and the media about what is and what isn’t part of the beliefs of the Church. Only then will the Church be able to say, with sincerity (as Gordon B. Hinckley failed to do in the interview above), “it’s behind us”. Until then, it’s not.

-PWM