The New York Times Magazine and Mormon “Secrecy:” A Modest Response
What is this notion all about that “Mormons lie,” anyway? It seems to be a favorite of true anti-Mormons. Now a reputable scholar has a piece in the New York Times Magazine from last weekend that assumes the truth of that notion. The article is “What Is It About Mormonism?” and the author is Noah Feldman, described as “a contributing writer for the magazine, a law professor at Harvard University and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.”
This notion that an entire group of people, almost fourteen million strong worldwide, tend to lie, is the kind of bigotry that simply causes the jaw to drop. Some people have even been so bold (or foolish, or reckless, or bigoted, take your pick) as to suggest that Mitt Romney is not a fit candidate for the presidency because of his membership in the (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the “Church”).
It’s no wonder Romney “flip-flops,” the argument goes; after all, he’s a Mormon, and can’t be trusted to tell the truth. Can you imagine such an argument being made about any other religious group? Just for fun, exchange the word “Mormon” in that italicized sentence for “Jew” or “Catholic” or “Adventist.”
After a year or so of contemplating this ugly canard, I have a few thoughts about it. I haven’t got the time for a total fisking of Professor Feldman’s article, which really does appear well-intentioned, and balanced in its own way. Instead I want to focus on this part of Feldman’s thesis:
The Mormon path to normalization over the course of the 20th century depended heavily on . . . avoidance of public discussion of its religious tenets. Now that plural marriage was out of the picture, the less said the better about the particular teachings of the church, including such practices as the baptism of the dead and the doctrine of the perfectibility of mankind into divine form. Where religious or theological conversation could not be avoided, Mormons depicted themselves as yet another Christian denomination alongside various other Protestant denominations that prevailed throughout the United States. (Emphasis added.)
I am 53 years old and a life-long active and convinced Mormon, born and raised in Salt Lake City, and a Los Angeleno for over 25 years. I do not know what Feldman is talking about. I do not even recognize the Mormonism he describes.
But I think I know how he gets to his premise. I can even see why people who are already pre-disposed against Mormons say “Mormons lie.”
It’s because we hold back on discussing specific distinctive doctrines of our faith until after we have had a chance to describe the doctrines that are foundational to those “distinctives.” We do this for totally benign reasons. Anyone who really knows the Church, its members, and its culture knows this.
Non-Mormon readers, consider: If you were a Presbyterian missionary, teaching people who were curious about your faith but who knew very little about it, would you start with your most complex or sophisticated beliefs? Wouldn’t you want to lay foundation first, so as to make those beliefs intelligible?
Here’s the Biblical verse to which we often refer as a guide in these matters:
12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.
13 For everyone who partakes {only} of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.
14 But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.(Heb 5:12-14; New American Standard Version. The King James Version verse is here, and refers to “milk before meat.”)
That’s exactly what we Mormons are trying to do. It’s very basic, and far from nefarious. I was taught to present our beliefs this way thirty-plus years ago when I was a full-time missionary in Guatemala and El Salvador, and I did so, not because I wanted to fool anyone, but because my desire was so strong that my listeners understand my message. No doctrinal subject was off-limits, but we did try to defer answering the complex questions until we laid the foundation for the answers. And we did answer them. It’s just that before we answered questions about the nature of heaven, we wanted to explain to people why we are here on earth. It’s all about context and foundational principles.
But when some people (namely, critics of the Church) confront that approach to answering questions about distinctive Mormon doctrines, they shout, “Aha! This Mormon is dissembling and is evading my question!” It just isn’t true.
I also think that because of the secrecy associated with our temples, and perhaps because of our 19th Century history of hiding from government polygamist-hunters, as well as other factors, our desire to discuss matters “in their proper order” looks fishy to some people, especially people who have axes to grind and anti-Mormon books to sell. I can tell you that there is nothing the Church hides or holds back, except our temple ceremonies (which are deeply sacred to us, and which I also understand are available on the internet anyway). Those ceremonies are extremely benign, but we can’t ever tell people about them without losing our integrity.
This blog is not the place for Mormon apologetics (I am the wrong person for that anyway) but this post may be useful to a few people. If nothing else, I hope I have helped some readers understand what is going on when very small minds accuse an entire worldwide church — and a presidential candidate who happens to belong to it– of an untruthful nature.
Posted in Doctrinal Obedience, Religious Bigotry, Understanding Religion | 9 Comments » | 
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shpshftr on 08 Jan 2008 at 2:04 am #
More of the Mormons lie and are secret meme from Townhall:
All day Romney commercial on Fox News
“Swallowing the Mormon belief system is pretty hard for me. Supporting someone who gives allegiance to this belief system will be hard for many. A person’s core beliefs shape everything in their lives.”
“Perhaps this is what has made it difficult for Romney, himself, to adhere to basic convictions. When your core beliefs are difficult to hold onto, so are your convictions.”
“I see Huckabee as someone who will listen to his advisers, not to mention, that he will listen to the counsel of the Bible.”
“Romney’s support group is a bit of a mystery, as are many things within the Mormon religion. Who will he surround himself with?”
DavidWalser on 08 Jan 2008 at 4:13 am #
Lowell,
I don’t disagree with anything you wrote. Many non-Mormons feel the LDS Church is too secretive. However, I don’t think this feeling primarily stems from our (I’m LDS) desire to build a foundation of common understanding before discussing doctrinal details. Instead, I think the “secrecy” meme is part and parcel of the larger “Mormons lie” meme.
Central to the belief that Mormons lie is the question of whether or not we can properly call ourselves “Christians”. Romney angered many evangelicals when he declared that he believed Jesus Christ was his personal Savior. To (too many) evangelicals, Romney’s deceleration was not one of personal faith; it was Romney trying to claim to be something he’s not — a Christian. They believed he was aping evangelical language in an attempt to build a bond on false premises. No wonder they were and are offended! From their point of view, Romney was trying to trade on their faith. I’ve heard several evangelicals say they’d accept Romney if he’d just admit he’s not a Christian (and quit pretending that he is).
Of course, Romney isn’t aping Evangelicals when he claims to believe Christ is his Savior. It’s what he really believes, but (too) many Evangelicals will never believe he’s merely wrong (from their theological view) rather than intentionally misleading. I’m not sure how Romney (or any Mormon) can combat this communication problem. (My own brother-in-law thinks I’m being dishonest whenever I claim to believe in Christ.) But, in the end, that’s all it is, a communication problem.
If we, all, could agree on a definition of “Christian” to mean anyone who’s actively trying to live Christ’s teachings, this whole issue might evaporate. As long as a large part of the population insists someone has to accept the Nicaean Creed (or that the Bible is word perfect) in order to call oneself a Christian, a large portion of the population will consider Mormons to be liars.
macfan1950 on 08 Jan 2008 at 10:02 am #
Lowell,
Here’s one of the other facets of the “Honesty” question that’s closely related to what you wrote: My beliefs as a Mormon are so special to me that it is very painful to have them ridiculed. So, I am reluctant to go into any depth on the more difficult doctrines right off the bat, because of my fear that people will scoff at what I’m saying.
I would submit that the reluctance I feel can easily be misinterpreted as being secretive instead of “protective.”
Rusty on 08 Jan 2008 at 11:27 am #
Forgive me if my theo-nerd hat comes out a bit, I’ll try to keep it in check…
The “Mormons lie” meme is not a recent phenomenon, it has been out there for years. It is the basis of many anti-mormon books; We tell you what Mormons believe, Mormons will tell you they don’t believe that, but Mormons lie. As simple as that, it has become the catch-all explanation of why there are mixed messages; the Mormons are lying. With Romeny in the public eye, this subtext has surfaced to the mainstream. I don’t think this has come about directly because of the “well you talk like Christians but we don’t think you are” line of reasoning. I think it’s more the exposure to (and for some the acceptance of) the anti-mormon messages.
Now I don’t fault anyone for turning to the against arguments first. I’ve often heard strange tales of many different religions long before I could find someone of that faith to set me straight, but I’ve always given the believers of a particular faith the stronger credibility when they explain to me what they believe. I also can accept a spectrum of believers within a faith tradition who might give me different answers concering the central tenets of their organized faith without needing to call any of those believers “liars” when their answers conflict with each other, or my own understanding.
Unfortunately, this isn’t human nature. It has taken me years of practice to develop and keep this perspective. It would be nice if everyone had this prespective. I believe Lowell and John have similar perspectives, but unless you have a need to develop such a perspective, it isn’t human nature to have it. Now thankfully, most people I know who actually live near enough to some Mormons to know them, associate with them, work with them, etc. have a difficult time accepting that “Mormons lie.” Their perspective has changed based on personal experience. The rise in the prevalance of the “Mormons lie” meme while a Mormon is in the public eye, shows us simply how many people in our nation have not had to develop such a perspective.
The only way it can be combatted is by tackling the absurdity of the argument head-on. Six million Mormons in a nation of hundreds of millions (1-2%) isn’t enough one-on-one coverage to change the perspective for every individual. Using other groups as illustration with statements such as “Jews lie”, “Catholics lie”, “Blacks lie” can help to show how silly the logic is. What I think will help some, as has been pointed out here, is the atheists beginning to adopt similar themes for all religious people. i.e. Religous people aren’t intellectually honest.
coltakashi on 08 Jan 2008 at 12:54 pm #
Feldman adopts the thesis that the current political controversy over Romney is like the crises that led to the cessation of polygamy and the end of the ban on ordination of blacks to the priesthood. It’s a classic “thesis–antithesis–synthesis” model. The only problem is that the change in 1978 was nothing like the change in 1890.
There was zero public pressure on the Church in 1978 to modify the policy. It did not affect civil rights, but only the internal policies of a religion, which no government has authority to interfere with. After all, Mormons still don’t ordain women, and neither do Catholics and Eastern Orthodox churches. And as Mike Huckabee brags, there were still plenty of racially segregated Baptist congregations in the South when he became a pastor in 1980, but no one was crying out that they should be forced to integrate.
The “pressure” that preceded the change in 1978 was entirely internal, driven by the concern of a compassionate man who had demonstrated love for Mormons of all races, and was well aware of the many faithful black Mormons who embraced the Church in spite of the policy.
Now what pressure is acting on the Church now? Basically, none at all. The CJCLDS has always been portrayed inaccurately by the news media. Critics of the Church don’t seem to realize that, where the Church is concerned, the old adage “there is no such thing as bad publicity” is very true. The more nasty things that are written and said about Mormons, including Romney, the more opportunities are created for telling the Mormon side of things to the news media and the more the news media are willing to interview Mormons and run stories in which at least some of their own voice is heard. More people will check out the Church web sites and walk into meetinghouses. As any Mormon can tell you, there are always people out there who already agree with many of the Mormon views on the most difficult issues of Christianity, and they find out about the Church when someone tells them “You sound like a Mormon.” So whichever way Romney’s political career goes, this is a golden opportunity for Mormons to get the news media to help them spread their story. Mormons are in their element! Why should they want to make any changes now?
In particular, Professor Feldman fantasizes about the CJCLDS going the way of the Community of Christ Church (nee Reorganized LDS), which has explicitly backed away from all the distinctive doctrines taught by Joseph Smith, beginning with plural marriage and temple ordinances back in the 1860s and now reaching the point where they don’t even assert the status of the Book of Mormon as scripture or of Smith as a prophet. From a purely organizational perspective, why would the LDS Church back away from doctrines that have led it into doubling every 20 years since 1850?
It is interesting that the opposite fantasy (or nightmare) to Professor Feldman’s is indulged in by many Evangelical pastors. They think that Romney being elected or even nominated will “give legitimacy to Mormonism” that it somehow currently lacks, and that this fear is a justifiable reason to oppose Romney at all levels. Rather than the Romney moment breaking the wildness of the Mormon movement, they see a threat that Mormonism will make a sudden break into public acceptance and bring more people into the Church. I find this notion very strange. I know of a few cases where people first looked into Mormonism because of a Mormon celebrity they admired, as the Osmond Brothers were in Japan circa 1970. But I do not recall ever hearing of anyone whose introduction to the Church was his admiration for Senator Bennett or Secretary of HHS MIke Leavitt.
Instead, as noted above, the Church thrives on negative publicity, so whenever a pastor expresses fear of a Romney presidency leading to more Mormon conversions, he is actually feeding the public controversy and publicity that is a real source of conversions to Mormonism.
People who claim that Mormons lack “legitimacy” in the public sphere are demonstrating their own insularity. As he demonstrated at the Olympics, whether he is elected or not, Romney is going to be an influential American who will do things of high visibility. How is a Mormon being majority leader of the US Senate below the threshold of “legitimacy”? Or Mormons being elected as members of Congress or governors, or serving in cabinet apointments, over the last few decades, in some 10 states? The whole notion that the pastors expressing this fear have assumed to themselves the right to judge the “legitimacy” of other Americans’ religious beliefs is one of the problems that led to Joseph Smith and the other original Mormons seeking a path to Christ that did not go through the ministers of the established Protestant churches of Antebellum America.
Perhaps the origins of the Protestant Reformation in denunciation of the “legitimacy” of the Roman Catholic Church, and the very real armed conflict that often resulted, has conditioned Protestants to think it is natural to view interfaith relationships as war. “Onward Christian Soldiers” and all that. As Romney noted in his speech, they carried that tradition of coercion and suppression of dissent into the New World with them, and it was at its peak in the late 19th Century with the denunciation of both Catholics and Mormons, both largely groups of immigrants regarded asd “unAmerican”. Why no more anxiety about Catholics, but plenty about Mormons? Perhaps because Mormons are small enough to be vulnerable, but fast growing enough to be a threat, while Catholic growth is mostly a matter of immigration.
JLFuller on 09 Jan 2008 at 7:12 am #
Bigotry exists in the world. It is a criminal behavior. Some crimes are arrestable and result in prosecution. Others are non-arrestable. Bigotry is a non-arrestable crime. Like any criminal, the bigoted perpetrator feels a sense of entitlement to his behavior and believes he can get away with exhibiting it. Such people think their victims are stupid, debased or in some other way are deserving of his contempt. They have earned it. But like other criminals, the bigot exhibits criminal or destructive behaviors in other areas of his life.
Just like a thief or drug dealer, he didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to begin a life of crime. He got there incrementally. It is a process not an event. His behavior is learned. He takes his cues from people who are often more powerful than he is such as older siblings, parents, or clergy. Often he is a victim of someone else’s intolerance. These more powerful people are his tutors. And just like perpetrators of arrestable crimes, his criminal behavior will always get worse. It never gets better unless there is some kind of intervention. We see him exhibit this behavior in the way he treats spouses and children as well. If not interrupted, the perpetrator will physically abuse other people who perceived as weaker such as his wife or children or small animals. Dr. Stanton Samenow goes into these and similar behaviors in detail in his seminal works “Inside the Criminal Mind” and The Criminal Personality which he wrote with Dr. Samuel Yochelson. Both of these works are foundational in recognizing and treating criminal behavior. I highly recommend them. They are mainstays on every criminal justice professionals bookshelf.
JLFuller on 09 Jan 2008 at 7:36 am #
I would like to clarify a couple of things in my piece above. Crime means an offense against someones dignity, property or person. Non-arrestable mean it cannot be prosecuted in criminal court or by imposition of a fine or other sanction. These terms are used in the treatment of criminal offenders. The goal is to help the offender understand his criminality and develop self-monitoring mechanisms. These treatment programs are usually offered only to adult felony offenders who have been identified as having at least some minimal pro-social characteristics. Anti-social criminals do not respond to these treatment protocols.
JLFuller on 09 Jan 2008 at 12:34 pm #
The key in understanding the difference between overt bigotry and simple prejudice is action. Does the perpetrator act his belief out to the detriment of someone else? Is the behavior intended to defame or belittle the victim? A person can be prejudiced, like most of us are in some way, but not use his beliefs as a weapon against another. Daily we see responsible people express prejudices in a respectful and deliberative ways such as in debate and discussion. We see intellectual differences expressed in essays, papers or missives intended to enlighten or contrast and compare ideas. But always, the intent is to add to the discussion. It is not intended to hurt or malign.
In my opinion, bigotry, when expressed by a responsible person, should be looked upon as a personal failing. It then becomes incumbent on the the responsible person to repent and attempt to atone for the damage he caused by making amends. This is what honorable people do. We can not be expected to be perfect. But we can be expected to learn from our mistakes, be grateful to those who bring our shortcomings to our attention and be better people for the experience. We can re-frame our ideas into positive expressions or better, pose a question using ideas as the premise for the question. In our religious and political discussions, as we often see here, this allows respondents an opportunity to express another view or opinion without feeling assaulted. Deliberative discussion, that is deliberative dialogue is a form of dialogue that involves participants advancing claims and, without power plays or posturing, deliberating on the claims of others until a consensus decision is reached.(Macfadyen, Andrew, Stranieri and Yearwood) empowers everyone and adds to our collective humanity. In other terms, it makes us more Christ-like.
Rainman on 11 Jan 2008 at 8:08 am #
The love of money is no better than being a drug addict,prostitute or worse.It is evil.This person’s elitist and privileged attitude with a lack of consistency and honesty is not what America was built on.Being a phony conservative and salesman is not my idea of a good leader.I prefer somebody who knows first hand that what makes freedom is integrity,hard work,persistence and honor. This candidate mr falls very short of the honor and being the governor of ma is nothing to brag about.