It is clear that there is much evil in the world. The people of the world need to repent of many things. But before we point our finger at everyone else, the soul-searching , and the repentance, needs to start at home.
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Matthew 7:3
Living below our potential
The scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon, have been given to guide and warn the Saints, not the world. We are the ones who have them, read them (presumably), and take their advice (hopefully). The world either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about revealed knowledge.
Yet we all too often take the blessings and knowledge we have been given for granted. We make a covenant of consecration and then, when we are outside the temple, we claim that we are not really bound by the promise we made.
The Prophet and the Apostles wear protective masks in public, and get their Covid-19 vaccinations on television, and yet many members still dissent and believe they know more about medical health than Dr. Russell M. Nelson.
Mistreating fellow Saints
And, sadly, many members of the Church, at least in the United States, belittle, demean, insult, and gossip about other members of the Church because of their political beliefs and/or affiliation.
Of course self righteousness and intolerance happen in many different ways, but I am particularly concerned here with the ongoing, pervasive, and sometimes vicious, mistreatment that Republican Mormons, especially Trumpist Republican Mormons (it’s hard to call them “Saints”), demonstrate toward their fellow Latter-day Saints who happen to be Democrats.
This has gone on for decades, but lately it has grown so bad that Elder Oaks had to address the issue directly in the April 2021 General Conference.
We should never assert that a faithful Latter-day Saint cannot belong to a particular party or vote for a particular candidate.
Dallin H. Oaks
Despite his strong counsel, this bigoted, unchristian behavior continues unabated within the Church.
Unity is required to build the Kingdom of God
Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:
Ephesians 4:13
One Lord, one faith, one baptism,
Ephesians 4:5
With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;
Ephesians 4:2-3
Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
I say unto you, be one; and if ye are not one ye are not mine.
Doctrine and Covenants 38:27
The fact is, the Church of Jesus Christ simply cannot fulfill its mission to build Zion on the Earth in its current fractious, divided, state.
The opposing sides
The Trumpist Republican Mormons have a simple solution for this. They believe that the Church would be “purified” if all the Democrats, Progressives, Liberals, Socialists, Feminists, Pacifists, Environmentalists, Gun Control Advocates, and Social Justice Warriors would just leave the Church — or be excommunicated.
Given the ongoing Republican support for Trump, McConnell, McCarthy, Cruz, Lee, Owens, Greene, Boebert, and Gaetz, it appears that they prefer to side politically with narcissists, obstructionists, cowards, liars, pseudo-intellectuals, opportunists, conspiracists, gun nuts, and pedophiles.
It is likely Republican Mormons are dismissive, demeaning and cruel for the very purpose of making us feel uncomfortable so we will leave the Church. There is no reason we should cooperate with their plan.
It may be helpful for LDS Democrats (and other LDS progressives) to remember that WE make THEM uncomfortable. We keep insisting that society needs to change and improve. Like the scriptures, progressives challenge people’s lazy complacency and call them to action.
Healing a divided Church
The question is how the members of the Church can become more unified. Does the Church need to remove members who may disagree politically with the apparent Republican majority? Or does the majority need to repent of its self-righteous bigotry?
I hope it is obvious that the Gospel solution to division, anger, pride, and misunderstandings is always repentance (usually on all sides). The solution is never to self-righteously claim superiority and push people away.
In writing this blog I try to be aware of the possibility that sometimes I may be just as stubborn and judgmental as the Republicans I criticize.
But the current political division in the United States, and within the church of Jesus Christ, is no longer a question of preferred policy choices. It has become a question of truth vs. lies, facts vs. feelings, reality vs. fantasy. And in THAT struggle there is no middle ground and can be no compromise.
Though, as a political liberal, I have been accused of being on the side of Satan, I must insist that, since Satan is the “father of all lies” (2 Nephi 2:18), it is those who support compulsive liars like Donald Trump who are truly helping Satan.
I grant that many of these people are victims of skillful propaganda rather than being deliberately evil, but that is even more reason for us to try to wake them up by countering the falsehoods they cling to.
The wheat and the tares
For now Church leaders seem willing to let the wheat and the tares grow together (D&C 86:1-7). I believe it is important to point out that simply being a member of the Church does not qualify one as “wheat” in this parable. Righteousness is a function of behavior, not group membership.
Even so, Church leaders have tried to educate and enlighten those who persist in believing politically-motivated lies. In response to the pandemic they closed temples, conducted General Conference virtually, set an example of wearing masks, and received their vaccinations publicly.
In response to the election of 2020, the Church issued a statement congratulating Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on their victory. This is something they traditionally do and should not have been a big deal. Nevertheless, many Republican Mormons were upset that the Church officially acknowledged an election result that they still want to contest.
In addition to Elder Oaks saying clearly that faithful Saints can belong to any political party and that political discussions do not belong in our church meetings, the Church has added several interesting new items to the General Handbook. These include sections on Vaccinations, Affinity Fraud, and Extreme Preparation or Survivalism.
Of particular interest to me is the new section called “Seeking Information from Reliable Sources.” It addresses the serious problem of widespread media illiteracy among Church members, and warns us against sources that “seek to promote anger, contention, fear, or baseless conspiracy theories.”
We should be an example
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints need to become an example of equality, unity, and righteousness. The Church should stand as a light on a hill, an ensign to the nations, a beacon of hope in a troubled world.
We have a long way to go.
And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat:
Luke 22:31-32
But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.
Sources
Dieter F. Uctdorf, “Your Potential, Your Privilege,” Priesthood Session, General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, April 2011.
Dallin H. Oaks, “Defending Our Divinely Inspired Constitution,” Sunday Afternoon Session, General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, April 2021.
“Church Leaders Congratulate President-Elect Joe Biden,” Official Statement, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, December 14, 2020.
Brian Ferguson, “Maybe I’m Laman,” Insight, August 5, 2019.
Fact is, we are still on the cusp of a fascist takeover of the United States. There is no evidence (not that it doesn’t exist) on the part of Brethren about this. Moreover, there is ample evidence of socialism among the Saints in Palestine and in middle American, but such is avoided COMPLETELY among us. If socialism is not treated charitably in our LDS society, there will be no balance, PERIOD!
Great blog Brian. I wish I could be so succinct in putting my thoughts together.
I think it’s interesting that as LDS members we are encouraged to seek and find, to ponder and pray about things yet if we discuss our journey with others we many times are not met with any type of thoughtful dialog but with directives and edicts from “members” who speak as if they are directed from God to talk about “Socialism” or some other label they put on Health Care, Voting Rights, Immigration reform, or anything else having to do with politics. There is a huge difference between the socialism of Norway and that of North Korea or Venezuela. We may also agree that the Constitution is inspired from God but was it written as a stagnant or a living document. I believe it was a living document and that we need to adopt its principles to our modern society which can only happen when we are open to even talking together, particularly in the church.
Well said, and timely. One of the characteristics of “pure knowledge” in D&C 122: 42 is that it “enlarges the soul, without hypocrisy, and without guile.” The story of Enos demonstrates the enlargement of his soul, as he first prays for himself, then his family, then his enemies. It follows that impure knowledge has the opposite effect, a contraction of the soul, and an increase in both hypocrisy and guile. It happens that Trump’s narcissism, his hyprocrisy and guile all demonstrate a contracted soul and go hand in hand with the constant lies, ignorance, grievance, projection (rather than a self-critical check for beams onone’s own eyes), an reliance on such dubious sources as “a lot of people are saying”, which if traced, too often turn out to be disinformation sites.
In the famous story of the Blind Men and the Elephant, the quarrel about the nature of the beast in question depends not only on inadeqate sampling and over-generalization to make the beast, like a fan, like a snake, like a wall, like a spear, like a fan, like a tree trunk, like a rope, but in the metaphors that make those likenings work. Any resolution of the quarrel must involve broader knowlege, wider sampling, and a concern not to over-generalize from inadequate samples (such as Trump’s claim’s about what a typical migraint is like), but also involves a change of metaphor, and consequent enlightenment of the mind, and enlargement of the soul (as Alma 32 puts it).
To claim that democrats are leading us to Socialism like that in Venezuala involves a deliberate choice in selecting one particular kind of Socialism rather than many other potential examples, most of which, it ought to be admitted, are far less terrifying, and therefore, less useful for fear mongering and soul contracting. The metaphor gets repeated to control the narrative, and the narrative is selected, not because it best describes the real world, but because it serves the self-interest of the those who do the repeating.
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn explained that:
“Like the choice between competing political institutions, the choice between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between incompatible modes of community life. Because it has that character, the choice is not and cannot be determined by the evaluative procedures of normal science, for these depend on a particular paradigm, and that paradigm is at issue.” (Kuhn, Structure, 94).
I’ve written elsewhere that “We all filter and value our facts through a set of internalized stories and metaphors.” Hayden White explains:
“We should no longer naively expect that statements about a given epoch or complex of events in the past “correspond” to some pre-existent body of “raw facts.” For we should recognize that what constitutes the facts themselves is the problem that the historian, like the artist, has tried to solve in the choice of the metaphor by which he orders his world, past, present, and future.” (Hayden V. White, “The Burden of History,” History and Theory 5.2 (1966), 131).
Derrida makes a related point:
“One of the ruling illusions of Western metaphysics is that reason can somehow grasp the world without close attention to language and arrive at a pure, self-authenticating truth or method. Derrida’s work draws attention to the ways in which language deflects the philosopher’s project. He does this by focusing on metaphors and other figurative devices in the texts of philosophy…”
“His method consists of showing how the privileged term is held in place by the force of the dominant metaphor, and not, as it might seem, by any conclusive logic.” (Sarup, An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Post Modernism, 51–52.)
So one of the ways to attempt to enlarge souls and expand minds is to keep telling stories that stress the favorite metaphors and narratives, stories that they fail to acknowledge, cannot explain. And to provide stories and metaphors that do acknowledge what they do not want to see, and do not want to have to explain. It’s not an easy thing to do. Kuhn has a lot about that. And that is exactly the point of the parable of the wine bottles. New wine must go into new wine bottles. By proving contrarities, truth is made manifest. Pure knowledge greatly enlarges the soul, without hypocrisy, and without guile.
As I have said with justification many times before we are a ONE PARTY REPUBLICAN CHURCH. How do we know this: because all of the Brethren are such as are all of administrators of the Church. So to them I suspect healing divisions within the fold means thinking like they do in unison. Well so what? Because they cannot see Trumpist fascism staring them in their face. The next few yeas are going to be destructive even fatal to those of us who can’t adapt to Trump.