RubySoho
Winston
Of Mitt and Mormons
May 17th 2007 16:59
The two most divisive topics of discourse are, as most people would agree, politics and religion. I was keen on addressing a topic involving one of these themes today, but just couldn't decide what to tackle. So I figured, what the hell? I'll do a bit of both.
I'm not sure how much any readers outside of the U.S. (or even the people here) are familiar with a) Mormonism or b) Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts (my home state), current presidential hopeful, and Mormon. I'll try to provide some background for both issues, so that no one is wondering what I'm talking about (more than usual, anyway).
Let's start with the larger topic of the two, Mormonism. I am certainly not an expert on this. I know relatively little about Mormonism off the top of my head (outside of the basics) and had to check religioustolerance.org to clarify some points. I recommend going to this site if you have any questions. It is fairly unbiased and provides comprehensive information on almost all major religions.
Mormonism has its roots in the not-too-distant past. It was founded in Palmyra, NY by a young man named Joseph Smith. According to Smith, he began having visitations from God, Jesus, and the angel Moroni in 1820 when he was 14. These visits continued until 1827, when Moroni directed Smith to a location near his home to unearth four golden plates. These plates, with inscriptions by four ancient authors named Ether, Mormon, Lehi and Nephi, had information that coincided with and added to the Bible. Buried along with the plates were two stones which somehow were meant to be employed to translate the golden plates.
Without going into too much detail (please, click on the link above if you want the whole story. There's a lot of info, and not much of it makes sense), Smith employed a friend named Martin Harris to help "translate" the stones. This process involved Smith standing on one side of a curtained-off room dictating to Harris, who sat on the other side of the curtain. At no time was Harris permitted to observe Smith during the translation, as that would have angered God. In this manner, the Book of Lehi was translated. Harris' wife, Lucy, was deeply skeptical of this entire affair (thank goodness) and attempted to demonstrate that the whole thing was a hoax. In a stroke of simple genius, she hid/destroyed/lost the newly translated Book of Lehi, which would thereby force Smith to translate it again. If the stones and plates were legitimate, she reasoned, the second copy should be identical to the first.
But Smith had a clever, if transparent, answer to this. The loss of the Book of Lehi had enraged God so much, Smith said, that God temporarily took away the stones and would not let the Book of Lehi be translated again. Upon regaining the stones from God, Smith instead translated the Book of Nephi, which told essentially the same story as the book of Lehi, only with somewhat different wording.
And what was this story? Among the pearls of wisdom can be found this information (taken directly from the religioustolerance.org website):
-Some Israelites departed from the Middle East about 600 BCE, before the time of the Babylonian captivity and arrived in America. A patriarch Lehi had two sons: Nephi (from whom the Nephites descended) and Laman (from whom the Lamanites descended). The two tribes lived in a state of continuous feuding and warfare. The earthen mounds throughout the Palmyra, NY area are believed to be attempts at defensive fortification. Eventually, the Lamanites exterminated most of the Nephites circa 385 CE. The former became the ancestors of present day Native Americans. God gave to Native Americans their "red skins" in order to visually separate them from those who had followed God's commandments and teachings.
-Jesus came to America after his resurrection where he performed miracles, delivered a sermon similar to the Beatitudes and selected twelve disciples from the Nephite tribe.
Yup. Natives Americans are just Jews with "red skin" given to them as punishment, and Jesus came to America to hang out for awhile post-resurrection. Makes sense. While I'm pointing out aspects of Mormonism, I'll also note that Mormons, much like other conservative Christian denominations, tend to disregard evolution, were long associated with polygamy (a practice that they now disavow), and historically have held deeply racist views against black people. They regarded black people as having been cursed with the "Mark of Ham", a reference to Genesis 9:20-27:
20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. 21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father's nakedness.
24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said,
"Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers."
26 He also said,
"Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem.
27 May God extend the territory of Japheth ;
may Japheth live in the tents of Shem,
and may Canaan be his slave."
Ham saw Noah naked, told his brothers, and Noah was ticked off. God then "punished" Ham's descendants for this "crime" by giving them dark skin which marked them as inferior and fit for slavery. Again, who could disagree with such sound reasoning? There's certainly a theme running through this Mormon literature....
However, God was nice enough to give a revelation in 1978 (over a full decade after the civil rights movement hit its peak) saying that black people were OK after all and they could hold office in the Mormon church. God is such a cool dude.
One last Mormon practice to mention and then I'm moving on (this could go on all day) Mormons practice what are known as "baptisms for the deceased." In an effort to be helpful for everyone who is not smart enough to convert to Mormonism, they hold ceremonies wherein the names of people obtained through records of death certificates, etc. are read aloud and those people are then posthumously baptized into the Mormon church. Hallelujah!
OK. That was a lot to take in. There is LOTS more, but I think this gets the gist across. Here is a clearly man-made "religion", with well-documented instances of forgery and connivance (portions of the Book of Mormon are almost word for word ripoffs of portions of the King James Bible, for example). The beliefs are indicative of the widely-held racism common to that time, not to mention consisting primarily of the ego-centric ideas of a young con artist, with existing theology woven in between. Don't get me wrong. People are free to believe as they wish, provided their beliefs do not actively harm anyone. I will be the first person to defend that right, even if I think the beliefs are nonsense. But seriously, even a little bit of objective, critical thought should have been enough to blow this idea out of the water almost immediately. At yet, people bought it. They still buy it. And one of those people happens to be running for president.
Now, personally I don't care if Mitt Romney is a Mormon, Jew, Christian, voodoo practitioner, or even (heaven forfend) an atheist. What matters is whether or not he is capable of honestly and ethically performing the duties of office. Still, Romney's affiliation with the little-understood Mormon religion seems to be taking up a lot of space in people's minds as they consider him. It was the same when Kennedy ran for office in the 60's, when people were deeply suspicious of having a Catholic in office and speculated that he would take his orders from the Pope. The fears were groundless and ridiculous. There is no religious test for office, according to the Constitution, so why do we find ourselves yet again debating a candidates qualifications in terms of religion?
Possibly because Romney himself has made it an issue. Unlike Kennedy, who made it clear that his religion and his politics were completely separate, Romney is more keen on mingling the two together. He continues to play up "family values" and trots out a picture of his family life that borders on parody of the 1950's Donna Reed ideal. He won the governorship in Massachusetts in part by making a show of respect for existing abortion rights, but now regularly trashes the state for allowing abortion. In an attempt to cozy up to the powerful conservative Christian voting bloc, he now cites his religious values as being in sync with theirs on abortion, gay-marriage, stem cells, etc. In other words, Mitt is saying to all the other fundamentalist right-wing voters, "I'm just like you! We believe practically the same thing, plus or minus a few details, like how the Mormon scripture says that all other religions are abominations. So what if Joseph Smith blatantly made this whole thing up less than 200 years ago. I'm just like you."
So here we are, with another facet in the jewel that is the blend of American politics and religion. The Mormon element is the same as all the rest, give or take some details. Next we'll have to weigh out if we can handle a Jew, or a Wiccan, or a Buddhist, or even a Muslim as our commander-in-chief. We'll deal with it, frantically and obsessively, case by case, as long as no atheists run for president. Those people are crazy.
I'm not sure how much any readers outside of the U.S. (or even the people here) are familiar with a) Mormonism or b) Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts (my home state), current presidential hopeful, and Mormon. I'll try to provide some background for both issues, so that no one is wondering what I'm talking about (more than usual, anyway).
Let's start with the larger topic of the two, Mormonism. I am certainly not an expert on this. I know relatively little about Mormonism off the top of my head (outside of the basics) and had to check religioustolerance.org to clarify some points. I recommend going to this site if you have any questions. It is fairly unbiased and provides comprehensive information on almost all major religions.
Mormonism has its roots in the not-too-distant past. It was founded in Palmyra, NY by a young man named Joseph Smith. According to Smith, he began having visitations from God, Jesus, and the angel Moroni in 1820 when he was 14. These visits continued until 1827, when Moroni directed Smith to a location near his home to unearth four golden plates. These plates, with inscriptions by four ancient authors named Ether, Mormon, Lehi and Nephi, had information that coincided with and added to the Bible. Buried along with the plates were two stones which somehow were meant to be employed to translate the golden plates.
Without going into too much detail (please, click on the link above if you want the whole story. There's a lot of info, and not much of it makes sense), Smith employed a friend named Martin Harris to help "translate" the stones. This process involved Smith standing on one side of a curtained-off room dictating to Harris, who sat on the other side of the curtain. At no time was Harris permitted to observe Smith during the translation, as that would have angered God. In this manner, the Book of Lehi was translated. Harris' wife, Lucy, was deeply skeptical of this entire affair (thank goodness) and attempted to demonstrate that the whole thing was a hoax. In a stroke of simple genius, she hid/destroyed/lost the newly translated Book of Lehi, which would thereby force Smith to translate it again. If the stones and plates were legitimate, she reasoned, the second copy should be identical to the first.
But Smith had a clever, if transparent, answer to this. The loss of the Book of Lehi had enraged God so much, Smith said, that God temporarily took away the stones and would not let the Book of Lehi be translated again. Upon regaining the stones from God, Smith instead translated the Book of Nephi, which told essentially the same story as the book of Lehi, only with somewhat different wording.
And what was this story? Among the pearls of wisdom can be found this information (taken directly from the religioustolerance.org website):
-Some Israelites departed from the Middle East about 600 BCE, before the time of the Babylonian captivity and arrived in America. A patriarch Lehi had two sons: Nephi (from whom the Nephites descended) and Laman (from whom the Lamanites descended). The two tribes lived in a state of continuous feuding and warfare. The earthen mounds throughout the Palmyra, NY area are believed to be attempts at defensive fortification. Eventually, the Lamanites exterminated most of the Nephites circa 385 CE. The former became the ancestors of present day Native Americans. God gave to Native Americans their "red skins" in order to visually separate them from those who had followed God's commandments and teachings.
-Jesus came to America after his resurrection where he performed miracles, delivered a sermon similar to the Beatitudes and selected twelve disciples from the Nephite tribe.
Yup. Natives Americans are just Jews with "red skin" given to them as punishment, and Jesus came to America to hang out for awhile post-resurrection. Makes sense. While I'm pointing out aspects of Mormonism, I'll also note that Mormons, much like other conservative Christian denominations, tend to disregard evolution, were long associated with polygamy (a practice that they now disavow), and historically have held deeply racist views against black people. They regarded black people as having been cursed with the "Mark of Ham", a reference to Genesis 9:20-27:
20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. 21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father's nakedness.
24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said,
"Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers."
26 He also said,
"Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem.
27 May God extend the territory of Japheth ;
may Japheth live in the tents of Shem,
and may Canaan be his slave."
Ham saw Noah naked, told his brothers, and Noah was ticked off. God then "punished" Ham's descendants for this "crime" by giving them dark skin which marked them as inferior and fit for slavery. Again, who could disagree with such sound reasoning? There's certainly a theme running through this Mormon literature....
However, God was nice enough to give a revelation in 1978 (over a full decade after the civil rights movement hit its peak) saying that black people were OK after all and they could hold office in the Mormon church. God is such a cool dude.
One last Mormon practice to mention and then I'm moving on (this could go on all day) Mormons practice what are known as "baptisms for the deceased." In an effort to be helpful for everyone who is not smart enough to convert to Mormonism, they hold ceremonies wherein the names of people obtained through records of death certificates, etc. are read aloud and those people are then posthumously baptized into the Mormon church. Hallelujah!
OK. That was a lot to take in. There is LOTS more, but I think this gets the gist across. Here is a clearly man-made "religion", with well-documented instances of forgery and connivance (portions of the Book of Mormon are almost word for word ripoffs of portions of the King James Bible, for example). The beliefs are indicative of the widely-held racism common to that time, not to mention consisting primarily of the ego-centric ideas of a young con artist, with existing theology woven in between. Don't get me wrong. People are free to believe as they wish, provided their beliefs do not actively harm anyone. I will be the first person to defend that right, even if I think the beliefs are nonsense. But seriously, even a little bit of objective, critical thought should have been enough to blow this idea out of the water almost immediately. At yet, people bought it. They still buy it. And one of those people happens to be running for president.
Now, personally I don't care if Mitt Romney is a Mormon, Jew, Christian, voodoo practitioner, or even (heaven forfend) an atheist. What matters is whether or not he is capable of honestly and ethically performing the duties of office. Still, Romney's affiliation with the little-understood Mormon religion seems to be taking up a lot of space in people's minds as they consider him. It was the same when Kennedy ran for office in the 60's, when people were deeply suspicious of having a Catholic in office and speculated that he would take his orders from the Pope. The fears were groundless and ridiculous. There is no religious test for office, according to the Constitution, so why do we find ourselves yet again debating a candidates qualifications in terms of religion?
Possibly because Romney himself has made it an issue. Unlike Kennedy, who made it clear that his religion and his politics were completely separate, Romney is more keen on mingling the two together. He continues to play up "family values" and trots out a picture of his family life that borders on parody of the 1950's Donna Reed ideal. He won the governorship in Massachusetts in part by making a show of respect for existing abortion rights, but now regularly trashes the state for allowing abortion. In an attempt to cozy up to the powerful conservative Christian voting bloc, he now cites his religious values as being in sync with theirs on abortion, gay-marriage, stem cells, etc. In other words, Mitt is saying to all the other fundamentalist right-wing voters, "I'm just like you! We believe practically the same thing, plus or minus a few details, like how the Mormon scripture says that all other religions are abominations. So what if Joseph Smith blatantly made this whole thing up less than 200 years ago. I'm just like you."
So here we are, with another facet in the jewel that is the blend of American politics and religion. The Mormon element is the same as all the rest, give or take some details. Next we'll have to weigh out if we can handle a Jew, or a Wiccan, or a Buddhist, or even a Muslim as our commander-in-chief. We'll deal with it, frantically and obsessively, case by case, as long as no atheists run for president. Those people are crazy.
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Comment by Wendi
At any rate, I just stopped by to see if you had anything new up, and low and behold, ya do. However, it's about 2 a.m. in Kentucky on Saturday night and this post of yours requires much more than late-night, yawn-interrupted reading, so I'll be back when I'm a bit more chipper....
Just checkin' in. *smiles*
W
Comment by Winston
Small Thoughts on Big Questions
That's about all 2 a.m. is good for - mindlessness. Thanks for checking in!
Comment by Onesnap
Comment by Winston
Small Thoughts on Big Questions
I'm glad you enjoyed the article. I'll touch on religion of various flavors quite a bit, so check in again!
Comment by Wendi
As always, your writing is brilliant and the research impressive... it's just not a subject I form an "opinion" about, ya know? My brain doesn't wrap too easily around these kinds of issues.
-- have been having a few internet problems and unable to access the web for long periods of time. I'm working on catching up and looking forward to reading your other posts/comments... but time is so limited these days and the frigging tech problems are driving me nuts! *LOL*
Comment by Winston
Small Thoughts on Big Questions
I've noticed you've been absent a bit lately. Techy problems are such a huge pain, hope it's resolved before your CPU goes flying!
I'm looking forward to hearing your input on my post from yesterday (the two-parter). It's something a little different for me.
Comment by Wendi
Comment by Anonymous