Mormons

Before we can fully appreciate the Mormons, we first have to deal with the scandal of specificity. That is to say, we often can accept things when we view them through the aura of the years, but the closer things are to our own time, the more critical we become. The idea that someone had a revelation from God 2000 years ago seems more acceptable and believable than if someone claimed to have such a revelation, say, a century ago.

Joseph Smith was such a person. He was a product of "the burned over district," an area of New York where the fires of revival had swept across the landscape several times. His father was a diviner who sought buried treasure in Palmyra, New York, and the surrounding woods and hills. According to Joseph Smith the angel Moroni appeared to him and revealed the existence of a set of golden plates. On these were written the Book of Mormon in a language Smith referred to as reformed Egyptian. (This is an interesting claim in that Smith had no training in linquistics. How did he recognize what language it was?) The angel also provided him with translating spectacles which he used to come up with a book that sounds a great deal like the King James Version of the Bible.

Unfortunately, it is not as readible. The Book of Mormon is cloriform in print. It will put you right to sleep. It seeks to address virtually every sectarian issue current at the time of its composing. As one Smith's contemporaries pointed out, the Book of Mormon anticipated "every error and almost every truth discussed in New York of the last ten years" including "infant baptism, ordination, the trinity, regeneration, repentance, justification, the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, fasting, penance, church government, religious experience, the call to ministry, the general resurrection, eternal punishment, who may baptize, and even the question of freemasonry, republican government, and the rights to man."

According to the Book of Mormon, there was a fiasco after the building of the tower of Babel. As a result, the Jerusalites fled to the new world where their descendents the Lamanites (the ancestors of the American Indian) and the Nephites settled the continent. These were, Smith claimed, the lost Israelites spoken of in the Bible. Because Jesus came to save all the children of Israel, he appeared in America after his resurrection and established here the proper church order. The Lamanites, however, committed apostasy, and fought a war with the faithful Nephites who are wiped out except for Morman and his son Moroni. It was he who buried the gold plates that recorded the history of these ancient peoples in the hill Cumorah, along with the translating spectacles that Smith found, and waited for the proper time for the resurrection of the true church.

Mormon faith looks a great deal like Christianity, although it rejects the idea of original sin. It claims to be Trinitarian, and hold to such sacramental acts as Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and the laying on of hands. But there are points of disagreement. Baptism in the Mormon faith is both for the living and the dead. Everybody can be saved. The Bible is held to be the Word of God, but only as long as it is translated correctly. The Book of Mormon, they claim, is also the the Word of God, and only in it does one find the right key to translating the Bible. Mormons also hold that revelation is an on-going, open ended thing. Various revelations have been received concerning the Mormon practices of polygamy and excluding blacks from the Mormon priesthood. Both practices were were part of the orginal Mormon faith, but in the face of social pressure to change, the Mormon hierarchy has received revelations from God ordering both practices to stop.

Joseph Smith claimed that Zion will be built in America. Before that can happen, however, the true Israel will be gathered in America. This true Israel can be denoted by such externals as whether one lives in accord with family values, and leads a virtuous life.

Certain elements of the Mormon faith are not openly acknowledged. For instance, Mormons do not publically speak about their faith in a plurality of God. We are, in Mormon thought, the product of a Father and Mother God. As children of divine parents, we can become perfect and hence divine. When we do, we can go off and create our own worlds. This is the reason Mormons believe in a marriage that is for time and eternity, and it also explains their strong emphasis on family values.

Needless to say, such ideas got the Mormons into more than a little trouble in the early nineteenth century. In 1830, six converts accepted Joseph Smith as a prophet. (There was a widespread belief at the time that the American Indians were the lost tribes of Israel, and Joseph Smith played on this.) Together, they went to Ohio where they won a number of converts in Kirkland. From there, they moved on to Nauvoo, Illinois. By this point, Joseph Smith had become the virtual dictator of the group which was growing exponentially. By 1840, a Morman association had formed in England, and in this country Joseph Smith was becoming a significant political force. Because he voted his followers in a block, he controlled a state that was equally divided between Democrats and Republicans. In fact, he was considered as a possible candidate for the Vice Presidency of the United States. Fond of uniforms, he had a personal bodyguard of 2000 in Nauvoo.

What brought Joseph Smith down was not theology or politics, but polygamy. Joseph Smith had 27 wives, but very few descendents. (He pulled off this feat by claiming that there would be no salvation for women unless they were married) He claimed that every woman ought to be married, and although it was a tough job, he evidently felt up to the task. (It should be noted that his first wife, Emma, questioned whether his motivation was purely spiritual.)

Smith's enemies published the Nauvoo Expositor. When they attacked Joseph Smith in print, a gang of Mormans wrecked the press. These dissidents didn't take this lying down. Jospeh Smith was arrested and put in jail at Carthage. Since he ran the town by this point, he thought he would be released. And he probably would have been, if it had not for a small group of enemies who broke in and assassinated him.

After Joseph Smith's death, Mormons broke into three groups. The first segment consisted of those persons who Emma (his first wife) led to Independence, Missouri. Fourteen years after the founding of Mormonism, she forms the Re-organized Morman church. This church was purified, according to Emma, and interestingly it rejected the practice of polygamy. A second group formed at Beaver Island under the leadership of James Strong who claimed to find some Brass plates that contained a further revelation of the true faith. He came to be known as "King Jimmy, the First."

The third group followed Brigham Young. This was the main body of Mormons. Where Joseph Smith had had a demented integrity, Brigham Young was a self-serving opportunist. He took this group to Utah where they believed they were founding the American Zion.

The Significance of Mormons in American Religious History.

1) There is no limit to what people will believe. For a more extensive discussion of Mormon beliefs, click here

2) Mormonism is a classic example of the externalization of the faith and the materialism rampant in American Christianity. The sign of God's blessing is not a large balance in a bank, but for Mormons, religion is seen as the means to success.

3) Here one sees the tendency to interpret Christianity with an almost exclusive reference to ethics (family values).

The Millerites

The Millerites as the came to be know were the followers of William Miller. Miller was a farmer who proved that just because you study the Bible, there is no guarentee that you will understand it. After a careful study of scripture Miller concluded the end of the world was near, and he could predict the date. His message was simple: "the world would burn in 1843". That was the sum total of the preaching of Miller and his followers; the final harvest is near.

To prepare for the end of time, Miller and his followers sold their land, and bought white ascension robes. One man even had his buggy painted because he thought Jesus might want to take a ride with him. They waited on hill tops in their white robes, only to be disappointed when the end of time did not happen.

When Jesus didn't come back in 1843, they decided they had figured the dates wrong. The correct date was 1844. Again people waited. Excitment built as the date appoached. But once again, everyone was disappointed. Many left the movement in disappointment, but there were those who came to believe that Jesus had returned after all. But that his return was a spiritual happening.

Miller's faith was not shaken by his failures, and when he died in 1849, the movement was taken over by Mrs. Ellen White. She latched on to the American myth that Zion is in the future, and taught that the only reason the Kingdom of God had not yet come was that the churches of that day had failed to observe the proper Sabbath. Sunday was not the Sabbath, but Saturday. Under her direction, Miller's followers became the Seventh Day Adventists.

Christian Science

Mary Baker Eddy was the founder of this movement, and her principle belief was that matter can be made completely subservient to the mind. Poverty, she taught, is a sin; an error of the mind. Born in New Hampshire, she was given to tantrums and a nervous disposition. Frail and weak, she married three times.

She lived for a time in Wilmington in the 1840's. There she preached an anti-slavery message--door to door. When here husband died, she was pregnant. So she left town, and moved to New England where she had her child, whom she ignored. Eventually, the child had to be taken from her and placed in a foster home.

Since her father had rocked her to sleep as a child, she had a large cradle built in which she rocked to sleep each night. She was given to fits of hysteria, and proved difficult to live with.

Her second husband was a physician, a Dr. Patterson. He was a rake with interests in making calls for other reasons than the purely clinical. When he was arrested and put in jail while making one such call in Washington, D.C., he made a critical contribution to Mrs. Baker's latter development. She left him and moved to Maine, where she met Phenias P. Quimby who was interested in hypnosis and mental suggestion as a way to cure people. She fell in love with Quimby from the time she first laid eyes on him. But the relationship did not last. When she left him, she took his manuscript for a book he was working on with her. When her book Science and Health came out, it turned out there were disturbing similarities between her work and that of Quimby.

Mary Baker Eddy came to see hypnosis and mental suggestion as the Christian way, believing that Jesus taught people how to have positive thoughts. The confirmation of this was her own experience of instanteous healing as she pondered this insight. Mary Baker Eddy dated her own encounter with Christian Science from 1866 after she suffered a fall on the ice. She Read Mark 9:2ff, she claimed, and was transformed.

Mary Baker Eddy's ideas are akin to the Hindu idea of Maya. The world is unimportant. One can can move beyond it by power of one's mind. Ultimate reality is spirit. God is all in all. God is also a female. (Here she was influenced by Mother Ann Lee of the Shakers. The Kingdom of God, Mrs. Eddy taught, was not something yet to come, but was already here.

In 1873, she divorced Dr. Patterson, and embarked upon a period of altercations and sorry situations. About 1879, she moved to Boston and founded the Massachusetts Metaphyscial College. There she taught and wrote Science and Health. One chapter in the book is on Malicious Animal Magnatism. She claimed that an evil mind can affect others for evil. A good mind can affect one for good. Under her direction, Christian Science developed the conviction that Christ's redemption applies to both spirit and body, and that one can heal oneself and others.

Periodically, Mrs. Eddy issued new editions of her book and ordered her students to purchase them. Such practices helped build Christian Science into a world wide organization and herself into a millionarie. Ms. Eddy was always in quest of revenues, and would lecture anywhere if she were paid. One of the courses she offered was a class in Metaphysical Obstetrics. Practioners were taught to set by the bedside of a woman in labor and deny all evil. Mrs. Abby Comer followed this teaching with her daughter who died along with the child. Mrs. Eddy washed her hands of this tragic event, claiming that Mrs. Comer had not attended all the lectures, and had not been able to do do Metaphysical Obstetrics properly.

Mrs. Eddy's crowning achievement was the building of the First Church, Scientist in Boston. By time it was compeleted it had 40,000 members. It held 6 services with 5,000 in attendance at each one.

Christian Science has a highly centralized organization. Mrs. Eddy was concerned that someone would take over her group. So she established a system of Reading Rooms and the Christian Science Monitor to insure that her followers would read the party line.

Interestingly, Ms. Eddy did not attend services. She was "a legend in her own mimd." As she became older, she maintained the fiction of not growing old by staying isolated, and carefully staging her appearances in which she would not speak. She took regular drives through her estate, but when she became infirm she replaced herself with a stand-in. She claimed to be opposed to the use of medicine for religious reasons (sickness is a mental or spiritual problem, not a physical one), but bills exist in various Boston pharmacies for Morphine and Morphine derivatives that were used by her.

Today, Christian Science has less and less tendency to focus on physical healing. More stress is now placed on the primacy of scripture. But it suffers from a significant erosion of popularity.