Article VI Blog

Hugh Hewitt's latest book, A Mormon in the White House?  Ten Things Every American Should Know About Mitt Romney, is finally out and today Hugh's national promotional tour begins.  John and I have both read the book, and because it addresses so many of the issues we've been digging into for the last year, and does so very directly and in great detail, we've decided not even to attempt a single review.  There's just too much "there" there. Instead, we'll do a series of mini-reviews, examining specific issues the book covers.

Before beginning our first mini-review we need to say that A Mormon in the White House? is an indispensable guide to the religious issues connected with Mitt Romney's candidacy.  Anyone interested in those issues would be well advised to read the book and to share it widely with their friends and acquaintances of all faiths.

Full disclosure:  John and I have a special connection to Hugh's effort in writing this book.  As we note here, this blog resulted from a serendipitous appearance by the two of us on Hugh's radio show.  For the last year we have kept a keen eye on everything appearing in the news media and on the blogosphere related to Mormonism, Romney, and the presidency.  During that time John and I have been eagerly awaiting the publication of Hugh’s book, which we knew would be based not only on the same source materials we have analyzed here, but also on a series of in-depth interviews with Governor Romney himself, his family and close acquaintances, and others in the world of politics.  Hugh has not disappointed us. It is a fine and important contribution to the ongoing discussion of religion in presidential politics.  (We also thank Hugh for kindly and generously mentioning Article VI Blog in several places in his book.)

We begin our series of mini-reviews with what Hugh has identified as the three religiously-based objections to Mitt Romney's candidacy: 

1.  If there is a Mormon in the White House, Salt Lake City will call the shots, at least on the biggest issues.

2.  A Mormons president will supercharge Mormons' missionary work.

3.  It [Mormonism] is just too weird. 

We've addressed these issues here, of course, but Hugh brings new information to the discussion. 

James Dobson has famously said, "I don't believe that conservative Christians in large numbers will vote for a Mormon but that remains to be seen, I guess."  Hugh accepts Dr. Dobson's estimate as "a reasonable one," and then addresses his three questions in reverse order of importance:

1.  Salt Lake City will call the shots in a Romney presidency.

For the first time that we have seen, Romney himself provides a strikingly blunt rejection of the idea that LDS Church leaders might call him about policy issues, or that he might take their guidance on such matters:

"Would you ever expect a call from [LDS Church] President Hinckley or his successor?" I asked.

 

"No," he emphatically replied. "Absolutely not.  And I'd also note that when you take the oath of office, that is your highest oath and first responsibility.  That's true when you become governor, it's certainly true for anyone who becomes president.  When I placed my hand on . . . the Bible . . . when I was sworn in as governor . . . my highest and first responsibility was to honor my oath of office and follow the Constitution and protect the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  For those sworn into national office, their highest obligation is to the nation.  It would be inappropriate for Church officials to contact me and it would be less than appropriate for me to take guidance from any institution other than caring first for the oath of office."

2. A Mormon President will supercharge LDS missionary work.

This is essentially the concern that Al Mohler has expressed so candidly, as we've discussed in detail.  In his interviews with Hugh Romney addressed the issue directly– and light-heartedly:

Does Romney think he will be held up as a role model of Mormonism, part and parcel of the missionaries' pitch in the remote regions of the world?

 

"That would kill us," he said with a laugh.  "It's hard for me to know what the impact of that would be.  I think certainly that's not the reason I'm considering a run and I think it overstates dramatically the impact of the faith of a particular president."

 

He laughed again.  "I haven't actually looked.  My guess is that if you looked at the conversions here in Massachusetts, you wouldn't see any change between before and after I became governor, and I don't think Democarts are flocking to the Mormon church because Harry Reid is the majority leader. . . . 

 

To suggest that people would say, 'You know, because it's sort of fashionable, I'm going to join this group where you have to give up 10 percent of your income, you can only have sex with your wife." The dues in my Church are pretty high." 

 

"It certainly hasn't worked that way in Massachusetts," he said, with a final laugh at the idea . . . . 

3. It is just too weird.

This is the Jacob Weisberg argument,which we discussed here. 

This gets right to the heart of the Article VI issue – when is the candidate's religion relevant? Referring back to an early reporter's question about Romney religious undergarments, Hugh frames the issue this way:

"[T]here is  sphere of private beliefs about God that is not right to raise or probe, and though the border is hard to find when there are legitimate issues that need to be discussed, heading for the undergarments angle is disgusting and will appear so to most Americans." 

I still think the best response to the "Mormonism is too weird or irrational" argument is John Mark Reynolds' analysis, which we first quoted here and have referred to many times). Professor Reynolds is interviewed at length in the appendix to Hugh's book, beginning at page 271; the interview is fascinating, and highly recommended.  

Hugh thinks Romney should refer reporters interested in The Question to his book, and should say that The Question's been "asked and answered."  Hugh may be right.  He's given a broad response to the issues, with Romney himself providing the responses– for the first time so far, in most cases.  Romney does respond to the "3 objections" quite definitively.

One of Hugh's closing comments to his book seems most appropriate:

It seems very unlikely that in a time of war, when the country is indeed threatened in very real, very immediate ways, that the electorate will punish a candidate for having a belief in a God who is not indifferent to the conduct of men and women, who hears the prayers of His people, and who believes in compassion toward the poor and justice for the evildoer. 

Indeed.  Get this book for yourself everyone you know who might be interested.  It is a very important and successful effort at illuminating the "Article VI issues" and advancing the related discussion.

John? 

John adds:  First of all, as all of Hugh's books, this one is a masterpiece of readability and clarity.  It would be very easy, given the subject matter, to get lost in esoterica and to brandish a vocabulary that would render the book just flat out inaccessible.  I also would like to add my word of thanks to the kindness Hugh shows this blog in the book.  This book is destined to quickly make it onto the NYTimes bestseller list.  Such is rarified air for a couple of guys like Lowell and I.

We have been over these objections and this territory quite a bit in the year of this blog's existence, so I will be brief.  First of all, there are historical as well as political precedents for these questions and all have been shown historically to be objections without substance.  I am referring, of course, to the Reed Smoot Senate hearing of 1901-1905.  We have examined those in detail in a series of five posts which began February 20 and ended last Thursday on March 8.  If you are interested in the whole series, use the search box in the right-hand column and search the term "Smoot."

My second comment is one of the two shortfalls I find with the book.  There is a lack of direct quotation of evangelical Christian leadership.  With the notable and valuable exception of Al Mohler, Hugh does not present an interview with James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Tony Perkins, Richard Land . . . .  One is forced to wonder why.  I had hoped Hugh would get interviews with these people.  We have tried and failed, at least to date, but I was hoping that Hugh's credibility and visibility would allow him to succeed where we could not.  Hugh, of course, cites the already public statements by these individuals that we have cited on this blog, but why were we not treated to Hugh's great and patented interviews with them.

I have a conjecture in response to that question:  These individuals have nothing left to say on the matter.  As Lowell has pointed out, with the exception of Dobson, and Mohler, all of these people have said Romney's faith should not be an issue.  They know The Question is going to echo through people's minds and concerns and that if they say too much about it they risk alienating such people among their constituencies, but they all realize the essential illegitimacy of the question when it comes to American style politics.  They all find themselves on a bit of a political high wire here.

Regardless, this is a great and valuable book.

Posted in Book Reviews, Doctrinal Obedience, Electability, Issues, Religious Bigotry | Comment on this post » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

I may be overstepping my bounds a bit with this post, but I hope Lowell will forgive me.  One question has been posed from a variety of sources regarding Romney's religion was not, until I read this book, answered to my satisfaction.  That question was most notably raised in Daimon Linker's TNR piece, although by raising it from a liberal perspective I think Linker reduced rather than raised its impact.

The question which I address concerns the powers of prophecy.  As a church based on prophetic revelation, the CJCLDS strikes many as a boat easily steered onto the rocks.  Creedal Christian experience with prophetic utterance creates an image of leading people in very wrong directions, like Jim Jones.  What prevents such an occurrence in the CJCLDS?  True, it has not happened.  In fact, prophetic utterance since the time of Joseph Smith has moved the CJCLDS in better, not worse directions.  But it still struck this evangelical observer as a theoretical possibility, at least until I read this book.  And while even if the church turned south, it does not mean Romney, or any other LDS politician, would.  Such would certainly create a dilemma and personal crisis for any LDS politician.

However, the incidents surrounding the Reed Smoot hearing in the U.S. Senate illustrate how such a prophet-lead wrong turn is unlikely.  The reasons are both structural and pragmatic.  The pragmatic reasons have been well discussed by Lowell and others.  The church is just too big and too diverse to move like a ship at sea.  The split that developed between pro and anti-polygamists within the church in the period between the 1890 Manifesto and the Smoot hearings illustrates that.

It's the structural issues that I want to look at.  The Catholic analogy is useful.  The word of the Pope is Holy Writ in the Roman Catholic church.  But no one seriously considers them some sort of prophet-led cult.  Why is that?  Simple – the Pope rarely, if ever, speaks without thousands of staff hours, multiple reviews by endless bureaucracies.  The Vatican rivals the federal government in complexity, Byzantine processes, intrigues and bureaucracy.  Utterance by the Pope is in fact the product of an incredibly complex process and politics.

Now, the LDS heirarchy is not nearly so Byzantine as the Vatican, but its intrigues are obvious in the stories surrounding the Smoot hearings.  What is important to know is that there are really two branches of LDS governance – the President/prophet and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the latter being a body of twelve very independently minded individuals.  I had always imagined the Quorum as a body of "Yes" men designed to add a stamp of legitimacy to the utterances of the president/prophet.

Yet, in the Smoot hearings, we see the Quorum acting quite independently and requiring a great deal of political pressure get them to fall in line.  The 1890 Manifesto banned further polygamous marriage, but it did not dissolve existing such marriages.  If you think about it, this is actually humane.  These women were dependent on their husbands for their livelihoods and to force those marriages to dissolve would put them on the street.  However, some members of the Quorum continued to perform the marriages.  This became a huge issue in the Smoot hearings.

During his testimony in the Smoot hearings, president/prophet Joseph F. Smith indicated that church officials performing polygamous marriage would be disciplined.  And yet, it took more than a year for the offending members of the Quorum to be forced to resign.  It becomes apparent in Flake's well-documented retelling of events that Smith's declaration in front of the Senate committee created an extended and difficult political crisis within the church.  Far from his word carrying the force of God, Smith had a great deal of good old-fashioned politics to bring it to reality.

This stems in great part from a structural independence between the two offices of president/prophet and Apostle.  While, as best as I can tell, the CJCLDS lacks the sort of constitutional documents that would set these separate power bases in stone, it is obvious that they exist.  It is also difficult to believe that in an organization the size the CJCLDS that such independence could be overcome through maneuvering or stacking of the Quorum somehow.

What I find most fascinating is that we often see the charge leveled at Mormons that they are misleading or duplicitous.  That somehow they talk-the-talk on say, monogamy, but they do not really walk-the-walk.  Certainly when the president/prophet is in front of the Senate saying one thing, while the Quorum is back in Utah doing another, one could see where such an image would arise.  However, that same observation says that either the president/prophet is a liar of almost unparalleled proportion, or the CJCLDS does not march in quite the lockstep with the president/prophet that people like Linker would have us believe.

Of course, the virulently anti-Mormon will trot off quickly to "the liar" explanation, but is that really the case?  How often have perfectly reasonable people been made to appear the liar by the simple facts of politics?  Take Bush 41 with his "no new taxes" pledge.  Was he a liar or did he get backed into a corner politically?  The answer depends not on the facts but on whether you are predisposed to call him a liar or not; on whether you examine the facts and circumstances carefully, or you simply want to use the event as a weapon against him.  And so it seems to me in the case of the relationship of the president/prophet to the CJCLDS.

The vision of the CJCLDS presented by this book and the events it describes is one quite typical of a democratic organization.  Strife, conflict, discussion and resolution are all at play here.  Hardly the stuff of a prophet driven cult.

Lowell's footnote:  Like all faithful Mormons, I sustain the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve as "prophets, seers, and revelators."  That's fundamental to our faith.  Too many outside observers, however, understandably find that disturbing.  After all, if Mormons were automatons, blindly and slavishly obeying the whims of Church leaders, that would be disturbing even to me.  But as John notes, and as Richard Lyman Bushman has made clear elsewhere, the reality is far different.  

It may help to understand the makeup of the Church's leadership.  The current Quorum of the Twelve includes a former tenured law professor at the University of Chicago who became a university president and then a justice of the Utah Supreme Court; a nuclear physicist; another university president; a former Stanford Business School professor and junior college president; a former senior executive with Lufthansa who was also a 747 pilot and high-ranking officer in the German Air Force; yet another university president; a successful automobile dealer; a senior executive in national retail business; a successful lawyer; a CEO of Revlon; and a world-renowned heart surgeon.  I am probably forgetting some of them.

Now, bear in mind that decisions of the Twelve need to be unanimous.  How easy do you think it is for a group like that– all men of real achievement and distinction who are used to leading– to come to a consensus on difficult issues?  And yet they do it.  More importantly, how likely is it that such a group would come up with weird or bizarre policies?  No reasonable person would think it very like likely at all.  One result of this structure, which we believe is divinely appointed, is that major changes come slowly.  Some evidence exists, for example, the the 1978 change that made all worthy adult men (including African-Americans) eligible to receive our priesthood came so slowly because of the consensus rule in the Quorum of the Twelve.  That may well be, but my point is that the structure of the Church's leadership is inherently deliberate and conservative. Nothing very cultish about that.

[tags]Mormons, prophecy, structure, politics[/tags]

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One of the charges that continue to this day to echo through various circles when they discuss the CJCLDS orbit around the idea that the Mormon church is somehow disingenuous, if not outright liars.  Such charges usually take the form of some sort of differentiation between the public and private face of the LDS church.

If one presses for specifics, the conversation always ends up discussing Mormon Temple practice.  These practices are something Mormons do not discuss with Gentiles like me.  It's their secret.  So, into the information vacuum flows all kinds of amazing contentions.  I have seen and been quoted all sorts of "authoritative" accounts of what happens in Mormon Temples.  All of it designed to make Mormons look like something just this side of devil worshippers.  I always wonder where such accounts come from since the people who are actually there promise to keep it a secret.

Of course, it's always from former Mormons.  But it always occurs to me that it is generally in the best interest of people that have left an organization to engage in exaggeration, and even lying, to make themselves feel better about leaving, and to give general justification to their actions.  Such charges from such sources scream for factual, not testimonial, confirmation.

Such charges showed up, entirely predictably, in the closing days of the Smoot hearing. In this case, the charges concerned an oath that Mormons were reputed to have to take to aid vengeance on the nation for the persecution suffered by Mormons prior to their move to the mountain West.  An extended quotation from the book is informative:

Unlike their judicial counterparts, senators hold hearings primarily to find prospective remedies, not to apply retrospective punishments. If the L.D.S. Church, as Smith promised, was going to change its ways and, as hoped by those who supported Smoot, discipline wrongdoers Taylor and Cowley, new justification was needed for Senate action. By making the L.D.S. temple oath an issue in the third and final round of the hearing, the protestors hoped to provide that justification. They could show that Smoot himself had participated in the temple ceremony and was bound by the terms of the oath he had taken there not to disclose it. This refusal, like Taylor’s and Cowley’s defiance of the Senate’s subpoena power, could condemn Smoot as one who placed himself above the law and in conflict with his oath of office. Smoot warned his church leaders, “This subject [of the oath] seems to have been revived in the Senate for some special pur­pose, and this purpose I believe to be the exclusion of all Mormons from holding Federal offices."

 

Wolfe provided the most confidently detailed, firsthand account of the L.D.S. temple ceremony. “The law of vengeance is this,” he said. “You and each of you do covenant and promise that you will pray, and never cease to pray, Almighty God to avenge the blood of the prophets upon this nation.’ “ Unlike previous witnesses who were confused on the point, Wolfe explicitly named the “nation” as the object of Mormon vengeance. The drama of Wolfe’s disclosure of the “secret oath” was compromised, however, by the evidence of its scriptural basis in the biblical book of Revelation, which all Christians believed but with no visible effect on their behavior. “I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held,” prophesied the Revelator, observing that the righteous “cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, 0 Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” In addition, the force of the protestants’ argument was undermined when it was shown that the Latter-day Saints who took this oath did not act on it. Senator Knox asked one witness, “What did you ever do in the line of keeping that vow? Did you ever avenge the blood of the martyrs upon this nation?” “No, sir,” the witness responded, “I have enlisted twice to try to defend the nation.” Though expressing an unpleasant sentiment, the oath was sentiment only and, because it was never expressed in action, was constitutionally pro­tected, religious belief.

 

Moreover, the country was accustomed to secret societies of oath-bound men. Many in the Senate belonged to one and were routinely in­vited to join more. The Methodist Reverend Joshua Stansfield, D.D., had recently written Senator Beveridge  inviting him to become a mason in “our Lodge — The Mystic Tie.” Latter-day-Saint-turned-Unitarian John P. Meakin characterized himself as a “joiner” when he testified on Smoot’s behalf, and he was not exaggerating. “I belong to the Knights of Pythias,” he told the committee, “and am the Past Grand Chancellor of our State. I belong to the Benevolent Protective Order of the Elks, and I served as chaplain for six months. I belong to the Fraternal Order of Eagles, to the Woodmen of the World, to the Maccabees, and I still have standing in the Odd Fellows, but not active.” Ultimately, the L.D.S. temple ceremony aroused less suspicion because of its easy comparison to the activities of other secret societies.

Note, like most conspiracy theories, the charges went almost nowhere in the Senate.  Flake notes two reasons why the charges went nowhere:

• It was based on scripture held in common by creedals and Mormons
• Secret ceremonies are common and generally do not indicate great revolutionary conspiracies.

To Flake's analysis I would like to add a couple of other reasons why the charges simply don't hold water, for Smoot, for Romney, nor any other Mormon.  Firstly, no witness matched the testimony of the "key" witness without prevaricating or being vague.  In other words, strict corroborative testimony could not be found.  There are and were a lot a ex-Mormons in the world; I would think certainly a few with identical testimony could be found.  That is, unless, of course, the witnesses were indeed fabricating, exaggerating, or otherwise embellishing their tales for impact.  Meaning at least part of their testimony was a product of imagination, not reality, and two people rarely share identical imagination.

Secondly, after several years of watching Smoot work in the Senate by the time these charges were levelled, other Senators and the public that paid any serious attention, saw no factual evidence to corroborate the testimony.  Simply put, Reed Smoot did not act like someone that had sworn vengeance on the United States of America.

The same must be said about all the wild hair stories that circulate today.  What Mormon behavior can anyone point to to indicate they are the subversive, perverse, near insurgency that is so often charged?  I know nobody will find any such behavior on the part of Mitt Romney, reducing such charges to nothing more than conspiracy theory nuttiness.

Lowell adds:  My church's temple ceremonies present Mormons with an interesting (and fairly unique, I think) problem:  We hold them so sacred that we do not discuss them outside the temple, even among ourselves.  For example, my wife and I may attend the temple, and while inside the temple discuss in detail everything said and done there.  Once we are outside the building, however, we will not discuss those subjects, even in private in our own home.  That's how sacred the temple and its ceremonies are to us.  In fact, we like to say the temple ceremonies are "sacred, not secret."

Knowing that, you can imagine how we feel when ex-members or critics of the LDS Church start talking about the temple ceremonies in public.  We cannot in good conscience respond in any detail.  It's quite frustrating, to be honest.  It provides a wonderful opportunity to attack the church, spread distortions, innuendos and rumors, and generally make Mormons (and Mormon politicians) look weird, because members of the church are all but powerless to respond.

I will not (and really cannot) lapse into Mormon apologetics here, but I can say this:  As a lifelong LDS member and frequent temple attender, everything that I have ever experienced in any LDS temple has been wholesome; has centered on the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the eternal nature of the family; fundamentally involves the purest form of Christian service; and has been beneficial to me as a man who wishes to be a better person and a true disciple of Jesus Christ.  The most sacred and personal experiences of my life, including my marriage, have occurred there.

But I can't and won't discuss them outside the temple.  Curious, isn't it?  For better or for worse, that's just the way it is. 

[tags]conspiracies, vengenance, L.D.S., Reed Smoot, U.S. Senate, temple, Mormon, conspiracy theories, baseless charges[/tags]

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We have before on this blog quoted from the book "How Wide The Divide?" by Craig Bloomberg (Evangelical New Testament scholar) and Stephen Robinson (CJCLDS New Testament scholar).  Specifically we quoted Robinson as follows:

Another frustration Evangelicals often experience in dealing with Latter-day Saints is the fact that we have no professional clergy, no creeds or catechisms, and no theologians in the strict sense. Pure LDS orthodoxy can be a moving target, depending on which Mormon one talks to. Indeed, my part of this book represents only the views of one Latter-day Saint, though I hope a credible one. I do not speak in this volume for the LDS Church, only for myself, but I think I qualify as the world’s authority on what I believe, and I consider myself a reasonably devout and well-informed Latter-day Saint. [Emphasis added.]

I could not help but reflect on that quote as I read the later portion of the subject book here.  In the wake of the 1890 Manifesto and the Smoot hearings the CJCLDS underwent enormous change.  Polygamy had been a bedrock on which the church had been built and now it was jettisoned.  Flake spends roughly the last third of the book examining how president/prophet Joseph F. Smith and The Quorum were able to pull off this seeming ecclesiastical miracle without schism.  (It should be noted there are schismatic Mormon groups to this day, but they are statistically and poltically insignificant, criminals in religious guise.)

To my creedal Christian eye, the astonishing fact was that it was such an amazing and difficult accomplishment.  From my basic understanding of a prophetic, revelatory faith, changes in direction would be fairly easy – "the prophet says so and off we march."  Which as an aside shows the utter ignorance of that South Carolina woman, Cindi Mosteller that looks like she is McCain's Mormon attack pit bull.  Lowell quoted an article quoting her sometime back this way:

On Tuesday, Mosteller, who is a Baptist, said, "The question is: Does Governor Romney support Joseph Smith's doctrines? We as evangelicals don't believe we can go in and change Paul's doctrine. I don't see how you move around this."

This reveals on Mosteller's part, and I think that of many others she represents, a particular ignorance of creedal Christian faith and history, since she assumes orthodoxy never, ever changes, and Mormon faith and history since she assumes it would have an orthodoxy in the same sense we do, and that that orthodoxy had never changed.  But I digress.

The plain fact of the matter is that Mormonism has an orthodoxy.  It is both more plastic and more individualistic than creedal Christian orthodoxy, but it is no simple matter of prophetic declaration.  This is born out in the political, liturgical, and ecclesiastical maneuvering which occurred in the wake of the Smoot hearings that Flake goes to such great lengths to examine in the later portion of the book.  I am reasonably certain that her examination of such would be uncomfortable for a Mormon to read.  It is my understanding that Flake is Mormon (she did undergrad at BYU) but she does not fail to turn a very scholarly eye on things that are deeply devout, making what appears to be very spiritual appear to be very pragmatic. I will leave the detailed discussion of events to the book.

These facts should, however, be a comfort to creedal Christians that fear Mormon faith in a presidential candidate.  The Mormon ship simply will not turn on a dime as this history illustrates.  For example, a Mormon in power would not therefore give license to Mormons to return to their polygamous ways.  Forget for the fact that a President could not make it legal by Executive Order anyway; the church itself would rebel against such a thing because it would violate their current orthodoxy.  Any prophet that tried to turn the church in that direction would need to be as opportunistic, shrewd, and most importantly patient, as Joseph F Smith was.  Even one that is as opportunistic and shrewd could not accomplish the feat today as the cultural conditions in the church simply are not ripe for it.  Such a prophetic utterance would, if I understand how it worked 100 years ago properly, create an enormous crisis in the church, but the more likely outcome would be an ousting of the current prophet and a gross weakening of the office, as would happen if any other religious figure in any other normative religion defied orthodoxy.

The events surrounding the Smoot hearings demonstrate practically that there is a Mormon orthodoxy and it is tightly held.

Lowell comments:  I have one clarification.  I am still reading the Flake book, so can't comment in great detail, but I will quote Richard Lyman Bushman, a Mormon emeritus professor of history at Columbia, on the question of prophetic revision of Mormon doctrine (link may require subscription):

But [the concern that LDS Church leaders will dictate policy to a Mormon president] –rooted as it is in logic rather than reality–does not take into account how revelation actually works. In Mormonism and in biblical history, the prophetic tradition itself places heavy restraints on prophets. It makes a big difference that the moral law is enunciated repeatedly in Mormon scriptures. The Ten Commandments were restated in an early revelation, installing them as fundamentals of the church. Later, the saints were told that "no power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned." Could all this be overthrown by a new revelation? Linker thinks that revelation negates everything that came before, but this is not the case. The best analogy is to the courts and the Constitution. Theoretically, five Supreme Court justices can overturn any previous interpretation of the Constitution on a whim. But, in fact, they don't, and we know they can't. Their authority depends on reasoning outward from the Constitution and all previous decisions. The same is true for prophets. They work outward from the words of previous prophets, reinterpreting past prophecy for the present. That was certainly true for church founder Joseph Smith, whose most extreme revelation, plural marriage, was based on plural marriage in the Bible. Prophets do not write on a blank slate. Like Supreme Court justices, they would put their own authority in jeopardy if they disregarded the past.

So I think Steven Robinson's claim that "LDS orthodoxy can be a moving target" vastly overstates the case.  LDS orthodoxy may evolve, but it does so exceedingly rarely and almost always at a glacial pace.  History is full of examples:  Polygamy and African-American access to the Mormon priesthood, for example.  Neither change happened overnight, although both were critical to the church's continued success.

[tags]Mormon, orthodoxy, polygamy, Reed Smoot[/tags]

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In this book, which we started discussing here, Flake is quick to point out in her introduction that before the reformative actions of the CJCLDS taken during the Smoot hearings, American had legitimate reasons to be concerned about Mormons in national office.  But that fact notwithstanding, her analysis of the origins of the fight against Smoot's seating are quite informative.

The voices aligned against Smoot were loud and broad, but she traces the origins of the movement to the Salt Lake Ministerial Association and its allies involved in protestant evangelism in Utah.  Quoting a bit:

Utah was an especially unpopular mission field.  Protestant evangelists had arrived in the territory a day late and a dollar short.  Like most non-Mormons, they trickled into the territory beginning in 1869, only after the completion of the transcontinental railroad and in support of those who followed eastern business and governmental interests west.  An 1870 census showed that 98 percent of Utah's 86,750 residents were Mormon.  Though the next twenty years saw their numerical dominance decrease to 56 percent of the territory's populations of 210,779, the L.D.S. Church was deeply entrenched economically and politically.  Protestant powerlessness was aggravated by the fact that those non-Mormons hardy enough to exploit commercial opportunities in Utah did not tend to be churchgoing folk.  Even after their families joined them, this small group of Protestants could not afford to support clergy, build churches and schools, and proselytize unbelievers.  Consequently, Utah's ministers were highly dependent on the financial support of their sponsoring institutions in the East.  AS late as 1905, only five of Utah's fifty-two Presbyterian churches were self-supporting.  Thus, Utah's Protestant home missionaries both wanted and needed to keep their national organization mindful of Mormonism.

 

In response to the shortage of funds and to avoid self-defeating competitiveness among the several denominations, state federations formed as early as 1900 to support the evangelizing of the West.  The Salt Lake Ministerial Association was one such federation whose shared evangelical purpose was cemented by antipolygamy sentiment….  Still, the poor ratio of dollars spent to converts made was a major source of concern to Protestants.  In 1899, when the Ministerial Association calculated "the results of evangelization among the Mormons," it found that only 514, or 16 percent, of its total membership of 3,220 had come from Mormon sources….  Faced with pressuring social problems closer to home and the possibility of doing more good among non-Christians abroad, eastern evangelicals increasingly withdrew their resources from Utah and the West.   As has been said of the Presbyterians, so also it was true that all Utah Protestants were "in a state of crisis as the nineteenth century ended."

 

The Smoot investigation gave Utah Protestants new hope….  By accentuating their differences from the Mormons and obtaining the cooperation of Protestant institutions, social reformers and women's groups, members of the Salt Lake Ministerial Association had every reason to expect that they could convince the Senate to reject Smoot….

In these words, Flake makes a case for something that rings true, but is nonetheless extraordinary and disheartening to my Protestant heart.  She makes the case that the Salt Lake Ministerial Association and its allies were motivated, at least in part, to drag the nation through a multi-year protracted public religious "trial" to keep the money flowing.

I am tempted to discuss what such things say about the depth of the persons involved actual faith and belief, and their commitment to the cause to which they ascribe so much urgency, but I will resist as such would border on an ad hominem.

What is fascinating though is that those who would appear committed to a separation of political and religious powers, because of how same had allowed their faith to flourish, would be so willing to use political means to win a clearly religious battle.  Rather than figuring out how to more effectively evangelize the Mormons thus keeping the funds rolling through success, they chose to shift the battleground to the political arena.  In so doing they sought to create a sense of urgency about their mission by demonizing their opposition, having the dual effect of motivating further funding and delegitimizing the Mormon faith and creating a somewhat more fertile mission field.

I will grant that polygamy was and is a reasonable social/governmental issue, but the Smoot hearings put the entire faith on trial, not simply polygamous practice.  Ending polygamy was the compromise solution that came out of the hearings.  There were and are ways to address polygamy without attacking a religion.

One is forced to wonder if similar motivations are not at play in current Evangelical and Protestant opposition to Romney's candidacy?  I am sure they are in some circles, but can those circles succeed as they did when the 19th turned into the 20th century?  There is no polygamy on which they can hang a claim of anti-social.  Can they in fact create a political battle where only an ecclesiastical one should exist?  One must conclude they already have to some extent. The Question is simply too prevalent.

However, one would hope the nation and the church are more enlightened these 100 years later.  One would hope the nation, in this new media age would recognize the issue for what it really is.  One would hope the church would have a better ability to execute its mission without resorting to such tactics.

[tags]Mormons, Protestants, funds, missions, motivations, battlegrounds[/tags]

Posted in Book Reviews, Doctrinal Obedience, Miscellany, Religious Bigotry, Understanding Religion | 2 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

The title of this post may have already upset some of my Mormon friends.  I am fairly certain that a church which believes it is the restoration of true faith would be a little upset with the idea of having to undergo "reformation."  Yet that is precisely the central thesis of the book "The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle" by Kathleen Flake.  I cannot recommend this book highly enough to anyone who is seriously interested in the interaction of politics and Mormonism.

Utah became a state in 1896, and not long after, 1900, Reed Smoot was elected to the United States Senate from that state.  Smoot was no ordinary person elected to such office.  Smoot was a member of the "Quorum of Twelve Apostles," the leading body and second highest office in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.   When he came to Washington to begin to serve, a firestorm was ignited that resulted in a multi-year hearing by a Senate committee concerning Smoot's capability to serve Constitutionally in the office to which he had been elected.  The question then was what still seems like the never-ending question to this blog: "Whom does such an individual serve, his church or the nation?"  Because the hearing took so long, and Smoot was meanwhile allowed to serve in his office and do so very well, it became apparent early that Smoot was going to be a very good Senator.  In essence the hearing put the CJCLDS on trial, not Smoot.

A brief aside – The question, "Is Mitt Romney the Mormon Al Smith or JFK?" has been bandied about on this blog from time-to-time.  The Smoot hearings were so public and so vitriolic, that despite the fact they did not concern the office of the Presidency, I would have to argue that Smoot best fits the Smith role, leaving Romney in the Kennedy role.  These hearings were so widely discussed in the press that "trial" did indeed occur in the court of public opinion.  Now, back to our story.

Clearing the way for statehood, the then prophet/president of the CJCLDS in 1890, Wilford Woodruff,  issued "The Manifesto" which renounced polygamy as a religious practice of the church.  However, as was demonstrated in the Smoot hearings, the practice continued, albeit somewhat more clandestinely, until, as a part of responding to the Smoot hearings 1901-1905, then CJCLDS president/prophet Joseph F Smith (nephew of LDS founding prophet Joseph Smith) issued a repeating declaration and the Quorum of the Apostles removed two of their own for  continuing to perform plural marriages since the Manifesto.  Flake's thesis, though she does not use these words, is that the Smoot hearings, where words turned to substance, is the place where the CJCLDS truly reformed, not as is commonly argued, the 1890 Manifesto and subsequent statehood.

[Lowell interjects:  For those unfamiliar with the LDS Church, the removal of an apostle from the Quorum of Twelve Apostles is a truly extraordinary event, one that occurred only three times in the 20th century.] 

I am using the words "reformed" and "reformation" here very purposefully, despite the potential for offense to my Mormon friends.  The creedal Christian Reformation of the 16th century is thought of by most creedal Christians as a theological event.  The advent of the printing press and translations of the Bible out of Latin made scripture available to the common man.  From this, great thinkers like Luther and Calvin forged a theology not so dependent on the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church, and those thoughts caught fire as people could examine their ideas for themselves.  Eventually schism resulted and Protestantism was born.

This classic Reformation was far more than a theological and ecclesiastical event; however.  It must be remembered that at the time sovereigns were granted their authority to serve their kingdoms by the church.  In essence, the church had authority over civil government.  As schism developed on the European continent, this fact remained, and sovereigns simply were blessed by the local denomination.  In England, however, something very different happened. The formation of the Church of England by Henry the Eighth was a purely political act.  Under his reign, the theology of the Church of England varied not at all from that of the RCC; such debate came only after his death.  The initial formation of the Church of England was simply Henry establishing himself as the chief political power in the land, not the church.  After the reign of Henry the Eighth, the church was subject to the state, not the other way around.  When it comes to how the world works on a day-in, day-out basis, this may be the single most important fact the 16th century Reformation.

Flake's thesis in the subject book is that in the actions around and responsive to the Smoot hearings, the CJCLDS placed itself in a position of secondary power to the civil authorities and thus came to conform to the American understanding of what a church is, an understanding that was developed out of the events of the 16th century Reformation.  Thus my contention that these events mark the Mormon Reformation.

This idea is terribly important in the current era for two reasons.  The first has to do with religion in general.  It is widely argued that the roots of current Islamic terrorism lie in the fact that that religion has yet to undergo reformation.  This makes sense, for the ideological roots of the terrorism are an effort to reassert Islamic eccesiastical authority over the authority of the state.  This argument divides the world into those with reformed religions, that is to say religions that consider themselves secondary powers to the state, and non-reformed religions which view themselves as primary powers – the former can broadly be considered ally and the latter enemy in current global struggles.  Under such circumstances it can reasonably be argued that even in a state such as ours, with religious plurality, an individual must participate in a reformed religion, or practice their religion, reformed or unreformed, in a reformed fashion to be eligible to serve the greater public good in elected office. 

Which brings me to the second area of importance for this idea, and it is essentially the one discussed above, but in specificity.  We have looked here before at what, speaking at the Evangelical Theological Society earlier this year, Hugh Hewitt summarized as the three essential questions Evangelicals have concerning a Mormon for president.  (I'm sure Hugh will discuss these objections in detail in his forthcoming book which can be pre-ordered here)  The first of those, expressed as an "objection" is:

• Mormon leaders in Salt Lake City will control the White House.

This is obviously not possible of a reformed faith.  If a faith has placed itself in a position of secondary authority it would not seek to "control" its adherents in public office.

There is much more to discuss out of this book and the events it chronicles.  The arguments against Smoot sound so familiar that I find it almost terrifying.  To hear people talk about Romney today it is almost as if nothing happened 100 years ago.  I am sorely tempted to jump up and shout "Objection! Asked and answered, your honor."  Unfortunately, there is no presiding judge in the court of public opinion.  I also think Mormon practice during the interim period between the 1890 Manifesto and the events surrounding the Smoot hearings did much to fuel the conspiratorial suspicions of the general public regarding Mormons.  Suspicions which are still held because since, Mormons have in large part stayed out of deep public scrutiny.  But this is enough for a single post – certainly more to come.

And so it does, beginning here.

Lowell briefly notes:  Despite John's expectations to the contrary, I do not object to calling what happened a "Reformation," as long as we are using the term very broadly.  I don't think it's accurate to say that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the "Church") "reformed" in the same sense as the sixteenth and seventeenth century churches to which John refers.

Instead, the Smooth hearings produced a political, not ecclesiastical, solution.  As Flake notes:

None of the Smoot hearing combatants were completely victorious.  Federal lawmakers did not eradicate Mormon political and economic power; the Protestant establishment had to modify its design for a Christian America; and the Latter-day Saints subordinated themselves to the state.

But all those combatants achieved something as well.  The U.S. Senate "both solved its Mormon Problem and articulated, for the foreseeable future, the means by which new and diverse religious communities would be constitutionally ordered and free."  The Protestants "achieved their primary goal of imposing monogamy upon the Mormons."  And the Mormons got political representation in Washington, D.C., which Reed Smoot exercised effectively for the next 30 years, enabling the Church "to thrive domestically and follow the American flag abroad, making it, in the early twenty-first century, America fifth largest denomination and an international church . . . ."

Stating the proposition perhaps too simply, after the Smoot hearings the Church either decided to become, or found a way to become, part of American society– after a long period of estrangement.  I will be following, and commenting on, John's posts on this subject with great interest.

[tags]Reed Smoot, the Manifesto, the Senate, history, Mormons, Al Smith, John F. Kennedy, Utah, statehood, Mormons, Christians, reformation, the Church of England, Henry the Eighth[/tags]

Posted in Book Reviews, Doctrinal Obedience, Political Strategy, Religious Bigotry, Understanding Religion | 2 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post