A Public Conversation about Mormonism

A good person and a good friend, Simon Critchley , wrote a piece for last Sunday's New York Times , " Why I Love Mormonism." Almost as soon as I got home from church, I started hearing about it from other Latter-day Saints. We like to be liked, just like anyone slightly neurotic about their social status. In America, Mormons are still teenagers anxiously waiting to see if we can fit in at the party and at the same time, knowing ourselves, convinced that the answer will be "Not really." But from all of the recent talk about Mormons, in response largely to Mitt Romney's candidacy, it looks like we at least got invited. Simon first blasted the unthinking prejudice that is often acceptable when people in the arts and the academy speak of Mormons or similar minority religions. Remarks that would never be allowed in reference to Jews or Muslims or Hopis go completely unremarked. In that context, for a Mormon to take offense at the hostility of prejudice pointed his way would itself be an offense. Simon's column brings the prejudice of those remarks into public view in a way no Mormon could. But that's the occasion for Simon's opinion piece rather than its substance. The substance of the essay consists in an overview of Mormon theology and, by way of conclusion, an interesting question or challenge. Simon did a much better job of explaining Mormon theology—in all its uniqueness—than most people do. That's partly what Mormon readers found so pleasing. It wasn't just that he paid attention to us, but that when he did he went out of his way to get it right, though not without a misstep or two. He gets quite right one thing that is probably universally held by Mormons, namely that God the Father is an incarnate being. One of the most important reasons for earthly life is so that we, like him, can become incarnate. It may or may not be turtles all the way down when it comes to Gods, but it is turtles all the way down when it comes to physical existence. There is nothing metaphysical or immaterial lurking behind the entities of the world. Incarnation, human fleshly being, doesn't mean changing from an immaterial state of being to a material one. There is nothing that isn't material ( D&C 131:7 ). We need the kind of materiality that is proper to divine life, and we begin to gain that by becoming human, moving from one dimension of materiality to another. Incarnation means becoming more like God. Attaining to divine life includes fleshly, literal resurrection , but we are material from eternity to eternity. That's what is behind the speculation about whether God has a father, whether we can come to be like him in the sense that we, too, will create and populate worlds, and so on—stuff that is, to my mind, increasingly understood as 19th-century speculation on the earlier claim. Behind such speculation stands the belief in divine incarnation that is central to Mormonism. (See the sermon on this topic by a contemporary LDS Apostle, Jeffrey R. Holland.) Simon also gets right that each person has something in him or her that is uncreated, "something that precedes God and is [in embryo] divine." (For more about that, see here.) These two beliefs, that there is a sense in which God and human beings are the same ontologically, and that some aspect of every person has existed forever, are among the most widely held beliefs in Mormonism, and they have practical consequences, consequences I'll take up when I take up Simon's question / challenge. Nevertheless, there were, as I said, a few brush strokes that weren't quite right. So let me see if I can touch up Simon's sketch of Mormon belief before I respond to the challenge that he points to. Many Mormons do believe that God was once a human being like ourselves and that we can become like him. That doctrine was widespread during the 19th century and remains popular, but most Mormons don't think much about it today. If they do think about it, there is a variety of responses. Some Mormons don't believe all of what that teaching entailed (see here , for example, and here ), and a few Mormons don't believe any of it. My view, a view that I think is shared by a number of other LDS thinkers, is that as a church we are not particularly hung up on theology. We can take it or leave it. (I've said some things about that here , here , here , and also here , particularly the last part.) As a result, the decision to accept the belief as Joseph Smith taught it or to accept part or none of it has no official consequences. Pick three Mormons: She straightforwardly believes what was taught in the 19th century. I believe that God was never a human being, but that we can become like him by receiving a fullness of his grace (as is suggested by passages such as John 17:20-23 and Romans 8:17 ). He believes neither that God was once a human being nor that we can become gods. Bully for us all. But the questions we will be asked by our congregational leader (we call him a bishop ) are about whether we are living a Christian life as understood in Mormonism. He is more interested in whether we are keeping covenant with God, our families, and the Church than he is in what goes on inside our heads when we do. Some of the bishop's questions will be about belief. It is, after all, not irrelevant even if it isn't the most important thread of Mormon religious practice: Do you believe in God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost? Do you believe that the LDS Church is led by a prophet? But most of the things he will ask will be about how we live our lives: Do you do your duties within the Church, taking on the responsibilities to which the bishop has called you? Do you live a chaste and honest life? Are you kind to those in your family?... He will almost never ask about theological particulars. We have theologies, but they don't have the resonance that they have for some other churches. Nevertheless, Mormons believe, as Simon points out, that there was a council of the Gods before the creation of the world. (See Abraham 4 and 5.) That's not only a consequence of Joseph Smith's interpretation of "In the beginning" in Genesis 1:1. It is also, and more importantly, a consequence of a series of revelations or translations that Smith received, the Book of Abraham. But in that book it isn't clear that the council of the Gods includes any more than the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost along with, perhaps, various angels associated with this creation. Some of Smith's uncanonized later sermons suggest more, and more was certainly taught from the 19th century into the 20th. But Mormon scripture doesn't demand that one subscribe to all of that "more," nor does Mormon history or ecclesiastical authority. Simon made only one glaring error. He said that women cannot be priests, and that is true. Mormon women do not have the priesthood. But Simon added to that a denial that women cannot aspire to divinity, which isn't true. Neither women nor men who have not been " sealed " in an LDS temple (something available either in this life or by proxy in the life to come) can aspire to divinity. Divinity is granted only to male-female couples. Indeed, we have a hymn, " O My Father ," which speaks of our Heavenly Father and our Heavenly Mother. Mormon feminists are not satisfied with the current state of our acknowledgment of Heavenly Mother, but even the most conservative, patriarchal Mormon man would not deny that there is such a being or that women as well as men can be divinized. The multiplicity of God for Mormons is more than Simon has imagined, though he has seen a good deal of that multiplicity in our thought. Let me add a point about Mormon theology that Simon overlooked but that I think would have added weight to his claim about Mormon theological uniqueness: Mormon heaven excludes almost no one. Even murderers and rapists receive a "glory." Heaven has degrees, but the highest degree is available to anyone who wants it, and most Mormons believe that there is some sense in which we will choose the level of salvation with which we are happiest. I suppose that Simon's reference to Joseph Smith's work as delusional and "from the same climate as Whitman, if not enjoying quite the same air quality " (italics added) should be overlooked. Perhaps it isn't an instance of the very condescension that he reacted against in the beginning of the essay. However, whatever the case with that, Simon raises a challenge at the end of his column that gets to the heart of his point and reveals what I take to be the importance of his essay: Joseph Smith's writings and ideas are theologically, poetically, and politically audacious; yet regrettably few within or without Mormonism have explored that audacity and its contemporary implications. Of course Mormons are Christians, or heretical Christians, or post-Christians. Call us what you will as long as what you call us doesn't exile us from those who recognize Jesus as the Messiah. But the question of what label to stick on our backs is a lot less interesting than the questions implied by Simon's challenge. How ought a Mormon, who believes that every person she meets has existed eternally and has the potential to become like God, be expected to understand her relations to other persons? How ought a Mormon, who is a materialist (even if an odd one), denying the existence of anything immaterial, think about the environment? About the body and bodily rights? About science? How ought a Mormon, with strong incarnational views as well as strong views about human identity, bring together questions of social justice, individual rights, and public obligations? What is the source of morality for a religion that appears to deny that God is in a metaphysically transcendent sphere? What does it mean to say that our sexual being is eternal, and what does that imply about earthly human relations? What does the belief in almost universal salvation imply about our present existence and our present relationships? For example, what might it suggest about how we mete out judicial penalties for crimes? Some possible answers are at least hinted at by the ways in which Mormon life is constructed: it is built on obligation and service at every level. All of the congregational officers serve without pay, with the bishop often spending as much time in service to the congregation as he spends on his paying job. Everyone is expected to have some job within the congregation. Everyone is expected not only to tithe , but to pay a monthly fast offering for the welfare of the poor, and to make additional offerings, such as for the Perpetual Education Fund. Expected donations can easily come to 15 percent of one's income, and Mormons are urged also to contribute to other charities. Pairs of women and pairs of men are supposed to visit all of the homes in the congregation each month to help with both physical and spiritual needs. As needed by the local church welfare unit, members of the congregation are expected to work at church-owned food production plants when needed, producing meat, canned fruits and vegetables, milk products, bread, etc. The larger LDS Church devotes considerable money and effort to internal welfare as well as to humanitarian efforts. And members are expected not only to take part in the service and welfare projects sponsored by the Church, but also to be an important part of local community and broader efforts to alleviate suffering and poverty. We make little distinction between the obligation to meet the physical, mental, and spiritual needs of other mortals and the obligation to meet the needs of those who have died. Huge amounts of time are spent gathering the names of ancestors and doing work in Mormon temples in order to create a vast, interlinking and eternal society of husbands and wives, brothers, sisters, and friends in the eternities. For Mormons, these efforts are anything but metaphorical. They are as real and as obligatory as the demands to come to the aid of those in physical need. We don't practice these things perfectly by any means, but they and the beliefs they incarnate suggest that the as-yet unexplored Mormon view of the world is different than the worldview of either political party, notwithstanding Mitt Romney's Republican candidacy and Harry Reid's Democratic membership. The most interesting public conversation about Mormonism hasn't occurred yet. Simon Critchley has written a beautiful, though in spots perhaps slightly awkward, love-letter to Mormons, but most such first confessions of love are somewhat awkward. Our responses have also been awkward, and probably will continue to be. We're just getting used to this kind of relationship with non-Mormons. But I, at least, owe Simon great thanks for what he said, and I think other Mormons do too.