Pres. Monson gives Pres. Obama family history book

Statements from the Church, the White House and Sen. Harry Reid’s office all go no farther than that. But there will always be those trying to find and read tea leaves that may not even exist. For example, in this report from Utah’s KSL TV and radio website, Dan Jones, a long-time Utah political pollster (whose wife happens to be a Democratic Utah state legislator) claims to discern political messages for Mormons–and perhaps even a dig at Rush Limbaugh. Am I too cynical in supposing this could be a whole lot of wishful thinking? Arghhh. Given the fact there was a bit of a dust-up earlier this year about LDS genealogy and Obama’s mother (which the media made a lot more out of than the White House–surprise), this could also be viewed as an effort at bridge-building.

The identification of the modern US with the lands where the Book of Mormon took place is largely a tradition that does not hold up under a careful reading of the Book of Mormon, which instead describes an area no more than a couple of hundred miles on a side. The usual entry for the “whole continent” view has been the identification of the modern Hill Cumorah with the Hill Cumorah identified in the book as the repository of the ancient library from which the book was drawn. But in fact there is no more reason to think the Hill Cumorah in Palmyra, New York, is the same as the Hill Cumorah in the book, than there is to believe the city of Palmyra is the same as the ancient Palmyra in Syria. There is nothing in the statements of Joseph smith to even give the name “Cumorah” to the New York hill until about 1842, when it had become a custom among the Mormons.

So what Ms. Stack describes in her article is not so much a modification of real Mormon beliefs but making a distinction between what is Mormon and what is simply (US) American. It is similar to the process the Church has had to undergo of distinguishing what are Mormon beliefs from the views that are simply part of the culture of the US and British people who dominated the early 19th Century Church. For example, Mormon depictions of the Apostacy of Christianity from the First Century Church have drawn heavily in the past on Protestant Reformation critiques of Catholicism. Similarly, some Mormons have adopted the views of fundamentalist Protestants about the meaning of Genesis descriptions of the Creation and the Flood without really considering whether they are mandated by LDS interpretation of the Bible and other LDS scripture such as the Book of Abraham and Book of Moses.

The need to simplify the church programs in areas where there are few experienced members and few resources for typical American programs like Cub Scout Pinewood Derbies has led to the Church stripping out surplus information that is not essential from curriculum and guidance documents.

Back in the 1940s, there was a time when it was considered necessary to indoctrinate a person for a full year before they could know enough to become a Mormon. This was in great contrast to the early Church. Modern Church programs are designed to bring those who are willing into full Church membership in a matter of weeks, largely by stripping out the non-essential stuff that is not needed to gain a conviction of the basic truths of LDS doctrine.

I think Stack is overstating the number of Mormon missionaries who are Americans. President Spencer Kimball in 1974 asked for more emphasis on members in each nation providing their own missionaries. That is why so many missionary training centers are now outside the US. In Japan a third or more of the young missionaries are natives of that country, as one can see from the pages of the Japanese language Church magazine.

As for the Americanisms that filter over from American missionaries, or from fellow students when foreign Mormons attend one of the BYU campuses, it should be compared to the American vices that get transmitted through marketing US films and cigarettes. Most local nation missionaries learn to speak English during two years of service alongside Americans, but that is generally a highly useful skill these days, and one that is rare in Japan, where english language instruction is ubiquitous but almost uniformly poor in engendering spoken fluency.