The Passing of Gordon B. Hinckley

Sunday January 27th 2008
9:00 PM Mountain Time

The Mormon phone and text tree went swiftly into action following the official announcement of President Hinckley’s death. I first learned about the prophets passing through a text from an old mission companion who lives in the Salt Lake area, he learned about it through a text news alert sponsored I believe by a local TV station or newspaper. Of course the Deseret News and KSL web pages were crashed by multitudes of Mormons eager for news on what is the LDS equivalent of the death of the Pope.

I’m really surprised how truly shocked I am, the man was after all 97. I didn’t expect to be quite so affected, though Gordon B. Hinckley was the prophet of my young adulthood, my highschool years and my mission. Many Mormons say you always harbor a special affection for the Church President of your youth. I don’t remember President Kimball who died in I was five, and President Benson I remember more for his General Conference absences do to ill health, then I do his actual presence. President Hunter was only in office for nine months, so when he passed I was honestly confused, hadn’t we just been through this.

I do indeed harbor a good deal of affection for President Hinckley, despite my cynicisms. He had an undeniable charisma and media savvy, he was a hard and dedicated worker, as well as a theological moderate. In the coming days much will be said about him, we will find out more details about the passing, though I imagine they will be nothing spectacular. There will be a funeral service, words of remembrance from political and religious leaders, internet chatting from all perspectives and the matter of succession and reorganization in the highest corridors of Mormon power. I hope to keep a record of my thoughts and experiences with these matters over the coming days and weeks on this blog, for now though I think I need some time to reflect.

September Dawn (2007)

First Impressions.

I’ve long said there is a good and potentially powerful movie to be made out of the events
of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, however September Dawn is not that movie. Almost universally panned by the critics (it merits a mear 15% approval rating at Rotten Tomato’s, a website that composites the reviews of newspaper and magazine critics across the nation). Perhaps the most pertinent comment on the film from a national critic that I can recall comes from Roger Ebert, who said something along the lines of: “What a sad and unpleasant movie this is”. I echo that statement.

Director Cain was by his own admission quite taken by the now eerie date of the massacre of a wagon train of Missouri and Arkansas immigrants by a group of Mormon settlers and Paiute Indians, September 11th. Cain can be heard in the DVD’s own bonis material (and elsewhere), to say that he intended the feature to point out that acts of religious violence have occurred in our own nations history and not just among the Muslims we now fight. Any intelligent person knows this, and examples can be cited from the murder of colonial Quakers, to Jehovah’s Witness being betan for there pacifism in World War II, to two 1844 events: Anti-Catholic riots in Pennsylvania and the murder of Mormon spiritual leader Joseph Smith.

Yet for all the apparent appeals to tolerance this film would like to aggrandize to itself, it has not one positive thing to say about Mormonism. It is eager to embrace any wild 19th century notion of Mormon nefariousness, including Danites (a Mormon militia of Missouri days whose continued existence in Utah is questionable) and blood atonement (a particular strain of frontier Mormon belief that has been formally repudiated by the modern LDS Church, and of which only one instance of its actual application, saving that of splinter groups, is clearly documented). The story plays like a pulp Victorian novel, employing sensationalist presentations of Mormon life and belief, and making no efforts to strive for balance. Let us not forgot that Mountain Meadows is arguably the worst episode in Mormon history, no similar massacres of “gentile” by Mormons having occurred before or since.

The desire to believe the worst about the Mormons can be seen down the line. The idea that Brigham Young sanctioned the massacre is delivered as fact, and historian Will Beagly, a strong propionate of that belief, is shown in the special features advocating that position. Yet this is a controversial call that divides scholars of Mormonism and to which no real hard or conclusive evidence exists. But history is secondary to metaphor in importance to Cain. Here the Fancher party are all saints, save maybe one, and the Saints all zealots, save one who eventually leaves the Church. The true story of the Massacre at Mountain Meadows will not be told effectively in film, until a film maker comes along who is willing to develop the humanity of the Mormons and the Immigrants involved beyond just stereotyped levels.

The Nativity Story (2006)

Direct and likable adaptation of the story of the birth of Jesus. The film is largely made viable by the engaging performance of Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary, her characterization is endearing and sympathetic, and her dynamic with Joseph brings out the whole, stunned young couple aspect, that the Biblical narrative always implies but doesn't sketch out in any detail. I've seen other interpretations of the Magi that were more compelling however.

Ustick Baptist's

I went to a Baptist service this past Sunday. It was the Ustick Baptist Church, a big building that’s near my house so I see it every day and wanted to go in there. Interestingly the Ustick Baptist Church is not located on Ustick Road, the remnant of a small town by that name that was absorbed by the city of Boise probably close to a century ago. Anyway there old building in Ustick they sold a number of a years ago and that structure now houses a congregation of Russian emigrant Evangelicals, whose own English language Christmas reach out service I attended back in 2002 with Chad and the tragically passed Megan Thomas. Anyway a lot of singing at the Baptists service on Sunday, I’d say I even had a limited spiritual experience there. I even got to be the bell ringer for my pew. But this holiday has really been made the presence of visiting friends and the fact that there is actually snow on the ground in the Boise valley for a change.

Two Christmas Services

Though decedent from the New England puritans, the Congregationalist’s as represented by the United Church of Christ, have now become one of the nations most notably liberal Christian denominations, perhaps passed only by the far left faction of the divided Episcopal Church in America. Boasting the likes of Barack Obama and Howard Dean among its membership, I had certain expectations, but the service I attended this morning was not overtly political, though peace was a major theme. It was the children’s Christmas pageant, a nativity play the aimed for the slightly quirky and focused on a former member of king Herod’s guard, turned shoe shiner, who encounters various players from the well known tale over the course of about a night (in this case around 40 minutes), with John the Baptists appearance being highly un-chronological. The kid who played Joseph was the only one who really attempted characterization, though he went for the unusual by playing Mary’s husband as if he where Martian Star, or perhaps a Muppet. Traditional Christmas songs were mixed with a few I hadn’t recalled hearing, such as "We Are Marching in the Light of God", a hand clapping number which I quite enjoyed. A pleasant pastor, brass instruments, and one of the more moving group recitations of ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ that I have participated in, rounded out the service, immediately after words I made way to the 5th Ward.

The congregation a Mormon attends is generally dictated by a rather tightly held geographic jurisidictionalism. However right now I find myself in the odd position of having as many as four LDS Wards that I might technically be eligible to attend. One of these is the BUI 5th ward, a congregation with a healthy representation of young, single people who have started on there post-college careers, a class I have recently entered. I found them having there Christmas "pageant" as well, a week early do to the propensity of this demographic to go visit there parents for the actual holiday. It was a well done service, quite satisfying, and had an unusually diverse (by Mormon standards) collection of musical numbers, one possibly in Latin. Memorable where songs sung from the perspectives of Mary and Joseph (the latter a male solo with harp accompaniment taken from the Mormon Christmas musical ‘The Forgotten Carols’). Also performded was a Book of Mormon themed Christmas song, perhaps the only I’ve ever heard, from the perspective of Samuel the Lamanite Prophet who foretold the birth of Jesus to the people of the New World five years before the advent. Sunday School and Priesthood services broke from the Christmas theme for lessons on Revelations and the Prophet Joseph Smith respectively.

Sunstone 2002: The Church and Its Scholars: Ten Years After

I have started to re-listen to cassettes of sessions from the 2002 Sunstone Symposium, and thought I’d offer some brief comments and observations about them. The first session I re-listened to concerned the 10 year anniversary of the 1992 Sunstone Symposium where Laviana Fielding Anderson presented her 20 year sketch on the ‘deteriorating’ relationship between the Church and its scholars. The events of that session in 92' appear to have had some effect on the eventual excommunication of Anderson, something I’ve never fully understood, along with the cases of some of her contemporaries. Anderson is obviously very attached to the Church, even loyal, certainly a believer, but one who finds plenty to be concerned about in the world of contemporary Mormonism, especially in regards to the relationship between the institutional Church and the individual member. The cases of Anderson and the dozen or so prominent LDS intellectuals to have been excommunicate between 1993 and 1995 are worthy of perusal, and you should be able to find much information there on at the Sunstone website and elsewhere.

In this session Anderson reviews what she said ten years prior and reiterates her continued agreement with, and the perhaps disturbing continuing relevance of, the conclusions she presented originally. Anderson’s basic material was pretty familiar to me still, but I got a lot out of hearing the respondent Armand L. Mauss, author of ‘The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation’, put forth his somewhat folksily styled perspective. Mauss believes that the escalation of these issues into media circuses and out-and-out conflict with the Church leadership does nothing to better the situation at hand. While sympathetic to the experiences of many of those who feel hurt by the Church in regards to a perceived backhand to there concerns and ideas, Mauss feels that one must remember that grassroots change is not likely to be imposed on the leadership of our hierarchal Church, least not in any short period of time. He advises members to remember that the Church is not a democracy and that continued affiliation means one has to live with the flaws and occasional short sidedness that comes with that. However he also says that the cultivation of good relationships with Church leaders both local and general can help get ones opinions heard, and is the most likely and least potentially destructive way to have an influence on the ecclesiastical body. I sympathize with Anderson’s idealism, but Mauss’s pragmatism better reflects the current state of the Church, and the mostly likely avenue to change in official tolerance of divergent conceptions of what it means to be a Mormon.

Extreme Mormons. Knowing satire on LDS cinema. For those not familiar with the Richard Dutcher reference click here.