“Secrecy in Mormonism: From Separation to Speculation”

We attended an interesting session on Thursday morning on secrecy or esotericism in religion.

One of the four papers concerned “Secrecy in Mormonism: From Separation to Speculation.” It was presented by Chrystal Vanel from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris (who seems to have, or to have had, some sort of affiliation with the Community of Christ, the former RLDS Church).  Here is his paper abstract:

Mormonism is a strongly proselytizing religion, with more than 80,000 young full-time missionaries worldwide, and a sophisticated communications network in bot hold and new media. But Mormonism is also a secretive religion. While its chapels are wide open to the public and all its members, its temples are only open to the most faithful Mormons. Through secret (“sacred”) rituals, they can hope for deification in the afterlife and be married for “time and eternity.” It is possible that the top Mormon leadership may undergo even more secretive rites. Mormon secrecy solidifies a particular Mormon community, distancing Mormons from others, as they are united by common secrets. But those secrets also generate speculation from journalists, critics, and certain Christian groups. The same can be said of Mormon finances, which typically are not communicated to the faithful, nor the public.

I didn’t learn of the Community of Christ connection until after his presentation, and, frankly, I was worried about what he would have to say (and show).  (I’ve never been very thrilled at the prospect of Mormonism, and the temple in particular, being pawed over by “objective” academics, examined like a lab specimen.)  I was relieved, thus, when he mentioned that he would have no PowerPoint.

As it turned out, moreover, he said little in detail about temple ritual.  Good.

But I had some real quibbles.

He took it as fact, for instance, that the Gadianton robbers in the Book of Mormon represent (and were modeled upon) the Freemasons, and cited the early description of the Book of Mormon as an “anti-Masonick Bible.”  I think, and have publicly argued, that that equation is far less secure than Dan Vogel and others have assumed it to be.

He faulted the authoritarian and anti-democratic character of Mormon leadership, and contrasted the nature of LDS general conferences, where speeches are given and everything is simply “sustained,” to the deliberative nature of Community of Christ conferences, in which “delegates” from local congregations can vote down proposals from the hierarchy — and have done so.

To me, the most wounding part of his presentation came when he dismissed Mormonism as quite uninteresting, as moving toward Evangelical Protestantism and containing no unique ideas of any real significance or power.  I think this is grossly mistaken, but I readily admit that we routinely give that impression, such than an outsider can be pardoned for concluding that, apart from an extra book and a past that featured an extra wife or two, we really have nothing to offer.  As one rabbi and professor told me over dinner many years ago in Austria, we’re simply “the quintessential boring Midwestern Protestantism.”

He dismissed general conference as utterly devoid of substance.  “It’s all about gay marriage,” he said.  And he picked Robert Millet out as the representative Mormon intellectual — and wrote him off as just an Evangelical fundamentalist.

I recall Stephen Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, in their book The Mormon Murders, referring with disdain to “the great, grinning, mashed-potato goodness of Mormon Utah.”  It’s a phrase that’s stuck unpleasantly in my mind for years.  And the horror writer Stephen King, who once referred to Utah as “a Perry Como kind of place, with a cultural level like that of the Soviet Union.”

Such judgments are unfair.  Grossly so, in my view.  But it sometimes seems that we’re determined to justify them.

I’ve been writing about Stephen Webb of late (and I’m not quite done).  I think he offers a valuable counter-perspective.  And, perhaps, a wake-up call.

Posted from Erfurt, Germany