posted
My understanding is that Donaldson got his information on leprosy from his father, a doctor in India. Maybe it was outdated info, so didn't include the cure possibility.
I stopped reading for a week after the rape scene. I would find it intolerable except that it's never excused and the aftereffects dealt with honestly. His Unbelief makes the rape particularly difficult to comprehend.
posted
Big ostentatious temples. Big ostentatious, even in their austerity, missionary programs. I don't see how anyone can be averse to a big beautiful hospital, library, or theatre which makes an unabashed statement this is where the ethic of our Church lies.
There are a lot of excuses on this thread. There is a time for humility, and there is a time for an unswerving undaunted commitment. There is nothing humble about the Temple or the impetus to convert, and to an extent, their shouldn't be, because the church believes these are important. I don't see where the viture is in working in the community, for the community, in secret. Good public works built and articulated with a clear purpose would help make the church less "other" by making a strong statement that the Church shares our values.
The SLC Olympics did a little bit of that, but that is still sports. I'd take a 60k square foot library.
posted
Yes, kat, that's true, he is. To how they spend THEIR money.
Or I guess, to be fair, he's saying if we want people not to think we are frightening and weird and taking over, we should spend our money the way he says. Only I don't think that would work either.
[ December 04, 2003, 02:45 PM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
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quote:I'm suspicious of anyone who has great ideas of how someone else can be Christian.
You spent two years on a mission teaching great ideas of how people can be Christian.
quote:Creating a library would be building a temple of a different sort. Does it come down to you approving of that kind of worship, but not the other?
What you are objecting to is the church spending money on the things they find important, but you don't find important.
Yep. And the Church has a problem in convincing people that their priorities aren't that far away from mine. Look, you want to know about how to end the alienation and get in good graces with the non-LDS. Play up the common ground. There is nothing seedy about it, unless the church is actually apathetic towards libraries, hospitals, and theatres.
posted
There are more ways to do that than the church footing the bill all of the time. If it comes to encouraging individuals members to be good citizens and work for public good individually, that does already happen. You've already said you don't approve of doing good works when they are hidden.
The whole concept of neglecting temples and missionary work to build things to buy good public opinion is very skeevy to me.
Lalo is interested in biking across the US. I can't remember whether you went this summer or are planning on next summer, but it might be interesting to compare notes. You might even ride together for a bit if the planned routes were similar. I bet you two would get in some interesting philisophical arguments on the way but it wouldn't be boring!
AJ
(now back to your regularly scheduled discussion)
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posted
You know, there's a parallel here to the Catholic Church which has for centuries been of the opinion that a grand church is important to the people's faith. Churches in the lowliest of places were often very ornate and adorned with precious metals, art objects, stained glass, etc. The churches were usually the best constructed buildings in the surrounding area.
It's an interesting thing to ponder. Would the world in general have been better off if the Catholic Church had spent its money on reducing poverty, feeding the poor, building homes for the homeless, etc., instead of collecting art and architecture?
Even today, when the church is less concerned with building new cathedrals and more concerned with maintaining the existing ones (the maintenance on some of these edifaces is enormous) the debate rages on. Couldn't we take care of the poor instead?
All the way back to Judas questioning the gift of expensive perfumes...
What's the answer?
To me the answer is to give money to those causes I believe in. I happen to believe more in the causes that help people get out of the rut of poverty and disease than I do in church-sponsored building programs. So that's what I give to.
It wouldn't bother me in the least to see churches selling off land to pay for upkeep on existing properties. It would bother me immensely to see churches stop the great work they do in caring for the less fortunate in the world and in our communities.
I don't begrudge a community its fine ediface, but I don't have to support it. So I don't.
Other people like that sort of thing and really do buy into the idea that a building can inspire holiness. And so, for them, it's a matter of giving so that they (and others) can have a nice place in which to worship and feel the presence of God.
Give me a shade tree any day.
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posted
What churches have built libraries or theaters? As far as hospitals go, LDS Hospital in Utah was originally started by the LDS Church but they have since gotten out of the hospital business (from what I understand). The LDS Church also operates three Universities and a college plus some schools in Tonga and/or Somoa and probably some others in additional Third World countries.
The LDS Church does not have unlimited funds and has a primary mission to develop spirituality. I do not see how building libraries and theaters will do that. I do not see how building libraries and theaters will seem any less suspicious in reference to ulterior motives such as conversion opportunities.
More vital concerns exist other than libraries and theaters. Namely those are being addressed worldwide - humanitarian, welfare and education. Money is best spent in those endeavors when venturing outside of the primary spiritual mission of the LDS Church.
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posted
The one part of the NPR program that really got my goat was the scholar. The expultion of the Mormons from Nauvoo in 1846 and their earlier expultion from Missouri were Pogroms pure and simple. We learn in our history classes how those "bad" Russians and eastern Europeans drove the Jews in mass from their homes, it is rarely mentioned that Americans did exactly the same thing to the Mormons for pretty much exactly the same reasons.
Six of my ancestors were driven out of Nauvoo. On pair not only lost everything they owned but had two children die of exposure in Illinois and two more who died enroute to Utah. To maintain that the people who drove them out were motivated by some sort of Jeffersonian commitment to democracy and religious freedom is insulting.
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posted
I think there was a point made about Jeffersonian Democracy as motivating the expulsion, but it had more to do with revulsion over the practices of Joseph Smith and his anti-democratic style of leadership than it did a failing of the people to appreciate the irony of what they were doing to the Mormons.
Basically, the show made Joseph Smith out to be an autocratic tin badge despot running Nauvoo like a factory town. That people were up in arms about polygamy didn't help matters either.
I'm not excusing their horrid behavior, mind you, but it wasn't like the people on either side were trying to accommodate each other. Seems to me.
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posted
It wasn't the people who built and lived in Nauvoo (as a refuge, no less) who objected to Joseph Smith.
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posted
*shakes head* I just mean that it wasn't the leader that was a political threat - it was numbers. They gathered there, and they would have overwhelmed local politics. In terms of numbers, they should have, or else it would have been like apartheid. There's no way to justify this under Jeffersonian democracy - the (justified) fear that you'll be outnumbered and outvoted.
The people who drove them out came from the countryside and the surrounding counties. The extermination order (Killing Mormons Okay!) came from the governor of Missouri, which is why they came to Nauvoo in the first place.
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quote:That people were up in arms about polygamy didn't help matters either.
I'm sorry Bob, but this simply isn't historically accurate. Althought that there is evidence that Joseph Smith and a select group of the Church's leaders were practicing polygamy in Nauvoo, it was done in secret. Polygamy was not openly practiced by the Mormons until they established themselves in Utah. The key accusations made against the Mormons in Nauvoo were (1) lawlessness; (2) disrespect for and avoidance of United States legal proceedings; (3) unlawful accumulation of military force; and (4) dominance in local elections and bargaining for favors with corrupt politicians.
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posted
Is the LDS conference center the largest theatre in the world right now? But it's not really a theater unless we agree to rent it out to Michael Jackson or Madonna I guess. How big is the newly renovated library at BYU?
Anyway, my opinion of Oral Roberts wasn't changed by him attaching his name to a University.
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posted
While Abe Lincoln did travel to New Orleans and had a personal awakening to the evilness of Slavery, I know of no evidence that he knew Joseph Smith, and futher he was considered an enemy to the church due to slavery and polygamy being equated by forward thinkers of the day. In the early days "mormons" were staunch democrats.
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posted
Well...I'm a little confused. Joseph Smith was described as a "known polygamist" and since he never made it out of Illinois (having been murdered there), I assumed that it was general knowledge prior to his death, and that it was practiced openly in Illinois at least by some of the church leaders.
I don't have any historical research on it, it was an assumption based on the chronology and that one description of Smith.
I'm trying to find a modern equivalent to how the locals might've felt back then on finding that an enclave of a particular religious sect had moved next door.
The best I can come up with is the furor over the followers of Sun Yung Moon taking up residence out west a few years ago, buying and building a "compound."
Basically, these folks are fairly peaceful. They don't kill anyone (that you could prove) and they aren't particularly interested in anything beyond being left alone (and brainwashing your teenagers).
However, if I found out that "the Moonies" had landed in my neighborhood, I would be sorely tempted to sneak over there one night while they were all out annoying people at the airport and torch the place.
Oh well. I guess I'm a religious bigot too. Except I wouldn't torch the place, but that doesn't mean I'd have to like them being there or go out of my way to make them feel welcome.
Anyway, I don't think there's any excuse for religious sentiment ending in blows, let alone murder. But I do think that many of the people posting on this thread are trying to sanitize the LDS' history for some strange reason. The fact is that your church was into polygamy in an official way. Joseph Smith sounds like a cult leader from a modern perspective (and probably appeared even more scary for all that in the times he lived in), and the group was overwhelming in its numbers.
The mob violence that ensued was not the church's fault and the followers of Joseph Smith were innocent victims who never have received any compensation. If I were in your shoes, I'd file class action suits and take back Nauvoo with a vengence.
That you haven't says more about what it means to be a modern member of the LDS church than it does about your church's history, I think.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe every mormon alive today would've fit right in with Joseph Smith's autocratic enclave back then. I doubt it, though. No more than a modern Catholic would enjoy living in Europe in the Middle Ages. Or a Protestant of today would fit in during the Reformation.
These are different times and we are different people.
Heck, we've redefined what we mean by religious freedom even. I mean, can you imagine the founding fathers explicitly making room on the schedule for a Wiccan ceremony before sending the troops out to meet the British? I can't. But I believe that this is exactly what we SHOULD be thinking when we say we have "religious freedom."
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quote:The best I can come up with is the furor over the followers of Sun Yung Moon taking up residence out west a few years ago, buying and building a "compound."
Are you perhaps referring to the [URL=The best I can come up with is the furor over the followers of Sun Yung Moon taking up residence out west a few years ago, buying and building a "compound."]Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT)[/URL]?
This group bought a large ranch outside of Yellowstone National Park in the mid 80s and turned it into a compound, complete with bunkers. Large numbers of their followers moved to the area and established business and homes in the area.
There were lots of protests when they bought from groups ranging from the Greater Yellowstone Coaliition to the Christian Coalition. During the time I lived in Bozeman, they were commonly mocked, ridiculed and even sued, but no one was ever killed and driven from their home because they belongs to CUT.
The fact of the matter is that the expulsion of the Mormons from Missouri and Nauvoo is the worst case of religious persecution in US history. It is in most details exactly like the Pogroms that took place in Russia. The fact that there are still scholars who justify the people who drove the Mormons from their homes is appalling.
[ December 04, 2003, 08:57 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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posted
One of the definitions of a cult would include leadership by a charasmatic individual. From that perspective, all of Christianity started as a cult. So did Mormonism. And so is, today, the Universalist (or whatever Moon's church is called).
I don't consider it a bad term. It has a deliberately pejorative sense to it which I fully intended.
What Christianity became, what the LDS church is today, and maybe (if we're lucky) the Moonies might become someday, is something that outgrew its cult status.
Mainstream isn't just a question of size (although number of adherents does matter). It's also a question of integration into society as a whole. Early Christians actually prided themselves on being "outsiders." Today, Christians get very very upset if they are treated as anything but mainstream. In the LDS' history, it seems pretty plain that there was a tendency to form communities apart from the surrounding people which you all have definitely gotten away from. Seems that way anyway.
Oh well. I didn't really want to pick a fight here. Maybe I'm not choosing my words carefully enough. Maybe you all take your church's history a lot more seriously than I take the history of ANYTHING I am a part of. So I should just lay off.
Please forgive me if this came off as insulting. And thanks for not getting angry with me...yet.
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quote:But I do think that many of the people posting on this thread are trying to sanitize the LDS' history for some strange reason.
There's no doubt that many Mormons (as well as official LDS Church discourse) tend to sanitize church history, but so far I don't see any of that on this thread.
quote:The fact is that your church was into polygamy in an official way. Joseph Smith sounds like a cult leader from a modern perspective (and probably appeared even more scary for all that in the times he lived in)
I think that your 'from a modern perspective' phrase here is key to this whole discussion. If you look closely at American history during this time from a modern perspective, then a lot of stuff looks pretty scary.
But what I find interesting is when I encounter academics or college-educated people who know a little bit about early Church history who are aghast at Joseph Smith ordering the destruction of a printing press that was being used to print items that were inflaming the community (this was a key action that led to his arrest that led to his murder), but who seem to care little about and certainly won't put Mormons in the category of victims of a pogrom.
It's just strange to me how easily we view past events through our own au courant lenses. Mormon apologists [and, yes, these are apologists, which means that they may overstate some things, but also may have some points and done some research that others haven't considered] have shown that Joseph Smith's actions related to the press were well within the rule of the law (and standard application of the law) at the time. The freedom of the press then wasn't quite what it is now.
EDIT: Just saw The Rabbit's follow up post above -- exactly.
Also: Bob -- No worries, I mean, look at all I do to try to entertain you. But I think that what's hard for us Mormons to take is that our dirty laundry (and supposed weirdness) gets dragged out by people all the time [And some of it is dirty -- Mountain Meadows was a massacre and the shedding of innocent blood and a stain on Mormondom no matter who 'knew' or 'didn't know' it was going to happen] and yet both our contributions to the building of America and the wrongs perpetrated against our ancestors are routinely ignored. Of course, I think it's good that Mormons don't do more to claim victim status, but I would like to see academics and the mainstream media give a more nuanced view of us, our culture and our history [of course, what non-majority group doesn't want that?].
How come there are no programs in Mormon studies in this country?
I would've thought BYU, at the least, would have such a course of study.
Oh well...
Hey, you know, I actually agree whole-heartedly with what you said about judging things from a modern perspective versus (more correctly) understanding the context in which they occurred.
In a sense, I don't think any of us can avoid sanitizing our history because we learn it from the sanitizers. Or worse yet, from people who teach it without questioning the sanitized nature of it. So we're too far removed from the removals to even know they happened.
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posted
It depends on what you mean by a program in Mormon studies. At BYU there are several such things -- and they are required for graduation.
However, I see no reason for their to be any such progams in Mormon studies at any university. Considering the mainstream's attitudes I would be very wary of them.
As for sanitizing, there is plenty of that for sure. However, there is a huge difference between ignoring the gritty details, and rejecting a declairation of "pogram" as a sanitization. To me, that is in itself a sanitization of an awful historical event. Perhaps its becuase Mormons, unlike other groups, have taken their persecutions and pograms and made something out of them instead of hanging on to defeatist emotions.
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posted
"Perhaps its becuase Mormons, unlike other groups, have taken their persecutions and pograms and made something out of them instead of hanging on to defeatist emotions."
Like, say, Irish immigrants to this country?
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posted
I'd like to go on record as NEVER having said there wasn't persecution, a pogrom, or any number of vile acts perpetrated against innocent Mormons.
I actually said at least 2x that nothing justifies the murder and ousting of Mormons from Nauvoo.
Oh, and how about the Italians?
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quote:What churches have built libraries or theaters?
scads
quote:As far as hospitals go, LDS Hospital in Utah was originally started by the LDS Church but they have since gotten out of the hospital business (from what I understand). The LDS Church also operates three Universities and a college plus some schools in Tonga and/or Somoa and probably some others in additional Third World countries.
These are all steps in the right direction.
quote: The LDS Church does not have unlimited funds and has a primary mission to develop spirituality. I do not see how building libraries and theaters will do that.
This is one I take issue with, maybe it's because books and theater are essentially tied to my spiritual development. I wish I could express their importance, but I haven't the words.
posted
Irami, to mine, most definitely, as well. And music. Especially music.
The teachings of the LDS stress education like no other religion I've been exposed to. I've heard Muslims are also enjoined to learn everything they can about everything. I think it's great that there's actual anti-fundamentalism text in the teachings of, say, Brigham Young. He said that all truths are part of our religion. Everything in science that's true is our doctrine too, and there is no conflict between the truths of any field and those of our teachings.
I don't know of any other religion in which that is spelled out quite so clearly. Brigham Young rocked!
I still feel like I will be coming to your baptism someday. Don't forget it's contagious.
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posted
Irami- in my opinion, the reason the Church no longer builds hospitals, theaters, etc, is because once the building is built, the use of that building may fall to contradict church teachings.
For example, abortions in a hospital named for Brigham Young.
'Baked Baby' being performed in a theater named for Hyrum Smith. ('Baked Baby' is a rabidly anti-mormon comedy, performed recently here in D.C.-- worse than Orgazmo, which I guess wasn't really anti-mormon so much as anti-Mormon lifestyle.)
posted
What Scott said makes sense. Once the hospitals and theatres are built, there's the choice to hand them over to other organizations, or else run them themselves. If handed over, they'd want to dissassociate themselves from it, because of the kind of thing Scott talked about. So much for the PR - they aren't associated. It would be a very, very expensive one time shot in the arm.
If kept up, it means that church would from being a church whose primary mission was spiritual matters to being the library, theatre and hospital business. When Utah was newer, they did it because no one else was able to. Now, though, with a myriad of organizations and institutions devoted and able, they have rid themselves of the businesses.
The times when the church does build those structures is when no one else can or is willing to. That's why so many are in Utah, despite there actually being more Mormons in California.
posted
Most schools of Hindu and Buddhist teaching (neither of which is really a single religion any more than Christianity is; they have subcategories nicely analagous to LDS being a subcategory of Christianity) make the importance of all truth of great emphasis in their religion. This is likely because both of them emphasize the meany-faceted nature of truth and that all shall be unified therewith in eventual transendence (though the typical hindu view is that universal truth is a manifest entity, while the typical buddhist view is that universal truth is a philosophical unification accessible to all).
There are many religions that greatly emphasize that view of truth.
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Name some - religious libraries and theaters don't count as they are used to promote or support the religion that built them.
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Most organizations affiliated with the churches of Christ are not formally run by any church, but merely by members thereof. Fairly often, their charter will state restrictions on the number of nonmembers who can be on a governing board or in the faculty and so on.
However, this has limited the production of facilities--as far as I know, we have no hospitals or libraries, for instance. And despite whatever restrictions were written into its original rules, Pepperdine University has very nearly become a secular school.
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posted
The geneology library that ludusti mentioned on the other page is an excellent example.
I'm currently fascinated with the job the Mason's did with St. John's and I kind of always have a soft spot for the Jesuits, even with their spotty past. ____________________ btw,
I went to high school with a family of LDS Funks, are you one of them?
posted
*grr* Bob, I'm not sure whether to take my response to that link out on you or the Jesuits. *snarl*
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Since I agree with them, maybe you should take it out on me???
Anyway, did anyone listen to NPR's show today on a small town that was taken over by Mexican immigrants? I'll have to check their website to find the story.
But basically, it was the same reaction as to Mormons (or anyone else) coming in large numbers and basically supplanting whoever was living there before.
So, it wasn't personal. It's just small town America and xenophobia at it's best...
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posted
Irami seems not to have seen my comment about the conference center. While its use is controlled by the church, they regularly have cultural events free of charge. Though it can be tricky to get a ticket. Attached to the main auditorium is a 1,000 seat "little theater" where they have charged for admission.
Bob- Joseph Smith was killed in 1844 (while being incarcerated at Carthage Jail). He was being incarcerated for destroying a printing press. The printing press was publicizing a lewd expose of polygamy- hence polygamy was not widely known at the time.
As others have said, Smith's legal wife Emma only knew of two of his many marriages, and she later declined that anything of the sort ever happened. Now that I think of it, I don't know if Smith fathered any children with anyone besides his legal wife, so if not, that would support her view of things. The "rules of polygamy" underwent an evolution. I don't really know how it went, but OSC's book Saints is one view of how it could have worked.
At the time Smith was killed, polygamy was still a rumor. It was mainly this paranoia over population shifts and government control that motivated a mob to attack the jail where he was being held, killing him and his brother, and wounding the author of the quote I referred to for Dagonee.
After his death, things were quiet for a time, and then in the winter of 1846 (18 months later) mobs moved to expel the Mormons. Whether they chose to drive them out in deadly cold for spite or because that's when people weren't busy farming, the fact is hundreds died who probably wouldn't have otherwise. Not everyone did leave. Emma stayed. Agents of the church were appointed to stay and sell what they could, generally for pennies on the dollar.
So the death of Joseph Smith was mainly political. The later expulsion of the Mormons probably did have more to do with the rumors of polygamy.
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posted
The problem seems to occur when the people who move in are perceived not as a number of individuals, but as a block, a "them", as opposed to "us". What is it that makes that happen? Is it any time the individuals share a language or culture or religion or any physical characteristic that is 1) not a majority group and 2) not one's own?
"All these blondes are taking over our town! If we brunettes want to have anything left we are going to have to fight for what's ours!" Not quite it. Being blonde is not in the majority, but it's considered a good thing in our culture. So this one can't happen.
Yet I can picture it being said about old people, or college age kids, of course (that was a big issue in my college town - for good reason), or mentally ill people or disabled people or deaf people or people of any ethnicity that isn't Northern European, or any religion that isn't Protestant Christianity. (Here in the U.S. I mean.)
If we could analyze this situation and understand what it would take to make it right, we could fix about 9/10ths of the wars and organized violence in the world. That would be a really good thing.
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quote:"All these blondes are taking over our town! If we brunettes want to have anything left we are going to have to fight for what's ours!" Not quite it. Being blonde is not in the majority, but it's considered a good thing in our culture. So this one can't happen.
I think that the real issue is that there is no perception that blondes have a different set of values and desires than the rest of the population.
I think that animosity towards a group is generally centered on the belief that members of that group have values that are not only different from "our values" but which we see as being in direct conflict with "our values".
In order to resolve this problem, we somehow need to increase peoples understanding that we are all human. Despite our culture or our religion, our basic human needs and values are largely the same. We all need food, clothing, transportation, shelter, dignity and love. We all desire time to play, time to think, and time to grow. We all love our children and want the best for them. We all appreciate fresh air and good health. We have far more in common than we believe.
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posted
St. John's was not established by a religion. Wheeling Jesuit is a religious school not a secular school started by a religion. Part of Wheeling's purpose is to develop spirituality.
Its not that kind of "funk", Irami . I have known some Funks in various places also but my member name uses no part of my actual name.
I lived in a community that WAS overrun by elderly retirees. They came down for the winter months and a portion of them stayed year round. They had a chilling impact on our schools, I'd have to say. Being on a fixed income, I can understand that they aren't inclined to vote for increased property taxes to pay for education programs, but frankly it gets a bit old. When a sizable portion of the population is from a group that resists change, it's a problem no matter what, as far as I'm concerned.
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posted
Yeah, Bob, I was thinking of the college students, too, who lived next door to me in a wonderful old house that had been split up for apartments. They kept the bad music on 10 until 3 am on week nights, and left their empty beer cans, and the regurgitated contents of those cans all over the porch and yard. <shudders> I suppose it's not right to generalize from those particular kids to all college students, but after a few neighbors like that, I can certainly understand why the townies would want to ban students from their neighborhoods.
I guess there are always real issues, too, that get mixed up in the "us" and "them" stuff.
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posted
Actually, there's a great Social Psychology theory that basically says that people actively gauge whether they can "mask" their prejudices before they act on them. Avoidance of the Handicapped was the seminal study in this a few years ago. Basically, if you put a wheel-chair bound person in a room with seats all around, and just loaded up the room with different numbers of "confederates" (non-handicapped people in the employ of the researcher). Then you send in the test subject and see where they sat. If it was down to two seats, one next to the handicapped person and one further away, then people would actually act against their prejudice and overwhelmingly take the seat near the handicapped person.
If, however, there were lots of seats and their choice would appear more or less "random" then people NEVER sat near the handicapped person.
It was actually pretty clever stuff as Social Psych experiments go.
The relevance, though, to overgeneralize in the extreme, is that if you have "issues" that make it look like you are just being a "concerned citizen" as opposed to a bigot, people will feel more comfortable acting out their prejudices -- avoiding the handicapped or making things uncomfortable for the outsiders. At least it'll work that way in the absence of open hostilities between the parties. Once things get that bad, all bets are off.
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