Fortress Zion: How we're becoming to much like our evangelical brothers

A fascinating piece on evangelical Christian pop-culture...on how the "Jesus is my homeboy" crowd is doing in the cultural marketplace of ideas...

According to this columnist, they're tanking. Evangelical Christians are beginning to see that their meager attempts to be funny, hip, or subversive are just woeful attempts to co-opt what the secularists have been doing for for over a century. Christian rock seems to be little more than a few synthesizers playing a few prolonged orchestral chords, all the while with the name "Jesus" intoned in the manner of a love song. Christian raves, Christian pro-wrestling, and many more offshoots provide Christians their own alternate reality in which they can live comfortably without fear of pollution. Yet one (namely, I) might ask: for being cultural warriors, these Christian warriors seem to be at best using 22 rifles against the enemies' AK-47s. Worst case, they aren't even willing to get out of the bunker.

Of course, this posting might come uncomfortably close to we LDS connoisseurs of LDS products. Admit it; we've all imbibed of the EFY subculture in our times at some point. We've all either bought LDS themed T-shirts, bought Peter Breinholt/JOseph: A Nashville Tribute cds, and Greg Hansen calendars. Is this wrong? Most certainly not...I like some of them myself (though the "I Know that My Redeemer Lives" song on the EFY cd is a little soothingly sketchy). We've all watched Saturday's Warrior, though some of us might compare the experience to an awkward family reunion where we have to endure the odd views of our strange Utah relatives. Some of us might have even seen a beautiful CTR ring that seems to draw more attention to itself than to "the right" (available to you for three easy installments of 119.95...that's only 475.00...just call 1-800-BUY-ZION for more information).

Such a mentality, unfortunately, is the illegitimate son of a very legitimate principle. Call it the "Fortress Zion" paradigm--we talk of our homes, family, church as being a fortress against the outside world; it is not an enormous leap to believe that since this fortress is under attack, that we must hunker down and weather the storm. This mentality gives expression in our tendencies to limit our friendly associations to members (I do it too), to only participate exclusively in Church humanitarian projects (if we participate at all), and to consider the works of Sherri Dew (poignant though they may be) as the pinnacle of our cultural edifice. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell has noted: the love of the gospel leads us into the fray, not away from Ninevah.

As a caveat, I only question Deseret Book because it is a cooperation that publishes many, many things by many authors with doctrinally unsound positions. As such, I believe that they must be seen as an entity separate from the church. I suppose the broader question is this...what relationship does having a distinct cultural identity have to our spirituality/theology? How "peculiar" must we be? And do we have something to offer society that the evangelical culture does not? While other utopian societies demonized dancing, the arts...the Mormons were the first to bring it to the West. President Kimball remarked: "Members of the Church should be peers or superiors to any others in natural ability, extended training, plus the Holy Spirit which should bring them light and truth."

In other words, we need to give a good name to the scholarship, the art, the music of the Christian faithful. Jewish scholarship has been wonderfully represented, but their orthodoxy has largely crumbled under the weight of modernity. Christian scholarship has melted under the heat of the culture wars. Mormons remain as the wild card.

Tortured Logic: Latter Day Saints and Torture

I read this article today on a Latter Day Saint interpreter/interrogater in Iraq who committed suicide when she saw the interrogation techniques being used (now I know it's the Huffington Post, but you can confirm the facts of the case through other sources). This raises some questions for me...

1) It's one thing to be in direct combat, where you essentially kill or be killed (as horrific as even that situation is). What of those who are asked by their leaders to interrogate criminals who are defenseless? How much accountability do they have?

2) How should Moroni be used as our exemplar in this situation? He did not torture...he saw the subjects of the interrogation as battlefield combatants and killed them on the spot if they would not swear an oath to give up their arms and their aggressive ideology of war.

3) Let's just remember that we join an infamous fraternity when we torture...(the Gulag, the concentration camps--both the South African and Nazi versions, and many notable others)...

It's one thing to talk about the "heavy hand of war" when thinking about these ruffian, hardened CIA agents who live on the edge of morality...it's quite another to think of a Latter Day Saint daughter of Zion (a returned missionary, no less) who's driven to madness by this warped world of morality...

True-ly...

Ah paradox...it trips off my tongue like a soothing lullaby...

This post will be short largely because the words given are better than mine. Please examine this speech...

http://speeches.byu.edu/download.php/Brown_Hugh_031958.mp3?item=9025&download=true

President Hugh B. Brown gave this masterful talk to BYU on the importance of truth-seeking. It's beautiful. The end. Sincerely, Russ

The Fine Things of This Earth

Power, politics, romance...normally, this is the stuff of cheap novels and bad movies. You know...corrupt CEOs, women of loose morals...throw Marlon Brando in the mix and you've captured the romantic world of corruption that we all imbibe now and again. Anyone who has played the parlor game "Mafia" knows whereof I speak.

Yet do such ideas manage to creep their way into our faith? While there were many reasons why Mormons rallied behind Romney for President (and this was unusual...Orrin Hatch never enjoyed such mobilization), what role did his wealth or riches (the choice of words makes a difference) play into our formulation of him as a spiritual man? Ask yourself, "Why is he wealthy?" Do you catch yourself saying: "Because he's made good decision, because he lives a good life"? If so, be careful...you might be trapping yourself into a doctrinal dilemma that could be very awkward if you are pressed. After all, I can point to scads of individuals who are wealthier than Mitt Romney...and definitely do not live the same kind of "good life" as Mitt Romney.

We might respond that it's not the wealth that is evil...it's the people that make it evil. Therefore, I would extend the argument--wealth is a neutral blessing. It is the kind of "blessing" that is given to the general populace who abide by particular principles (and these kinds of blessings are few and far between) regardless of their righteousness. Those who breathe get air (barring a respiratory condition, like myself)...those who eat get food, etc.

Now this begs the question: how does one "seek riches" without having the attitude of seeking riches? Sure, we can remind ourselves that it all comes from God...but are we thinking that as we buy the mongo house, the brand new 08 car? Additionally, let's face it: making a lot of money requires that we do "good business" (which normally implies layoffs), that we represent slimeballs as attorneys. True, there are plenty of professions that do not face such conundrums (dentists, medical doctors--though they too have their moments). One fairly active Latter Day Saint told me when discussing Saints in wartime: "Sometimes you just have to turn off your humanity." Whatever is to be said about the problematics of that statement, do we sometimes apply similar "wisdom" to the acquisition of wealth?

If nothing else, I would suggest that we train ourselves to cease associating wealth with righteousness in any way. And given that the association is rather subterranean (we aren't fully cognizant of it), it's all too easy to make thoughtless comments in Sunday School and priesthood about how the Lord blesses the righteous with temporal resources. While he's not going to let his Saints starve, I have known too many gospel-living, scripture-believing Latter Day Saints in the slums to believe that somehow they're second-rate Saints. Let's kill the myth of the Protestant work ethic once and for all.

Invisible Bullets

Invisible Bullets
Methinks that I cling to intellectualism...maybe I'm just bitter because all the religious people seem happier than I do...

Well, now my friends I'm feeling like it's "Big Question/Sweeping Statement" time...yes, I speak of those "big ideas" that tend to be absurdly abstract, horrifically vague, and almost hopelessly Ivory Towerish...

But then again, who is better equipped to handle such questions than a faithful, thinking Latter Day Saint? Who else has the beautifully practical wisdom of Boyd K. Packer: "It has always been my feeling that the doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not vague, nor mysterious, nor elusive. Rather, the gospel is what we do in our everyday lives, or, perhaps I ought to say, the gospel is what we ought to do." Meanwhile, Elder Neal A. Maxwell graces us with such provocative ruminations about almost every known philosophical question, ranging from faith and intellect, agency and omniscience, government, politics, and more. Our intellectual tools are well-equipped to such a task...

Stephen Greenblatt wrote a remarkable piece entitled "Invisible Bullets" some years ago. In the piece, he recounts a Thomas Harriott's visit to the Virginia colony of the New World and his first contact with the Algonquin tribes. Through an examination of Harriott's own account of the visit, Greenblatt posits a model through which cultural supremacy is gathered and maintained. Greenblatt starts with a discussion of athiesm in the early 17th-century, noting Machiavelli's comments that religion was the most effect form of civic discipline, that Moses was simply a learned magician, and that, as Christopher Marlowe noted, Harriott could do better than Moses at fooling dupes into buying into the act. Finally, Greenblatt discusses how Harriott depicts his interactions with and superiority over the Algonquin tribes. What does it come to, Greenblatt asks: technological superiority of the same brand as Moses over the Hebrew. How is it then that Harriott is able to talk of such notions that are so utterly subversive to his own conception of God? Here is where Greenblatt's model comes, and where it gets interesting for faithful Later Day Saints.

Greenblatt maintains that when an individual encounters a notion subversive to their own views, they engage in a three-step process: test, reorder, and explain. In so doing, we place the encounter at a sufficient distance from our core values, thus protecting ourselves from their subversive influences. By distancing ourselves, we contain the potential harm. Nevertheless, Greenblatt insists, attaining such a safe distance requires including the subversive elements in one's dialogue first. When Harriott discusses such foreign notions as aristocratic birth and demonology, we are not affected. We contain the effects these subversive notions have on us by distancing ourselves through place and time.

We also see this also in romantic comedies, in soap operas, and war films where a romantically involved couple hurl stinging insults yet are expected to get together in the end, where a terminally ill lover expresses her eternal romance. We see this when we read a story about a drug-dealer who meets the Mormon missionaries and then goes to prison later drugs later ("they planted a seed"). When someone loses a loved one to an accident, we talk about "the plan," about "experience," and about the refining capacity of suffering. Containment is our way of holding off meaninglessness, even as the book or movie jerks us through "our own constantly shifting allegiences."

Indeed, the Book of Mormon itself should be a horrendously subversive document to our sensibilities...an entire people essentially destroying themselves through pride, vainglory, and their own depravity? Yet Mormon/Moroni go through the same process as Harriott: they test (see Mormon chpts. 6 when Mormon faces cold reality about his people's agency: "Oh ye fair ones, how could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord"), they record (compare Greenblatt's description: "the moments in which we hear voices that seem to dwell realms apart" from the power structure to Moroni's "I speak unto you as though ye were present"--"you" meaning the only hope for writing the BOM") and explaining ("For the purpose of convincing Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ"). Wherein there was once madness, now there is sense.

How can we adopt this to our own purposes? After all, this might sound like academic mumbo-jumbo, but we do it all the time. Is it good? Is it bad? Stay tuned.

You Speak-a My Language: Why It's Important to Join in Our Crusad

Pretension...the good word (known in some LDS circles as "Webster's Dictionary") describes it as (clearing throat): "the putting forth of a claim." We have felt it wise that we should live up to the legend of the goodly Noah and abound in pretension, soak it up, and let its juices trickle down our lips. Briefly put, we actually believe things and believe in things.

Herein lies the Mormonism, and therefore, its philosophical underpinnings as they best fit for the 21st century. As Richard Bushman has argued, Joseph Smith stood on "the contested ground where the Enlightenment and Christianity confronted one another." All too often, missionaries and members, I fear, have fallen for the red herring that evangelical Protestantism and orthodox Catholicism pose the greatest threats to our faith. Yet fighting such battles is not just fighting old battles, but they're fighting a battle that has long since withered and died. For all the hoopla of society's "culture wars," the religious landscape is in flux right now...it is highly trite to speak in grave tones of how "people are searching"--but indeed, for what they're worth, the numbers show it. Fluidity is the order of the day: 4 in 10 adults say that they have changed churches during their lifetime. In sum, the historical boundaries of the religious order are disintegrating...leaving what in its place? Spiritualism of an unoffensive, heart-felt, and ultimately innocuous kinds. Never mind that the surveys that show American belief in evolution to be tepid at best also never address how important this view is to them personally. Sure, God created us...why not?

In other words, read: Barack Obama sans Jeremiah Wright. Barack Obama, the man who claims to transcend boundaries, indeed epitomizes the Zeitgeist in a slightly disquieting way. Perhaps I exaggerate Obama's significance, but hey, good speeches do not exist in a vacuum...they resonate and resonate for a reason. His rhetoric resonates because it not only transcends; it also dissipates--untraceable, intangible, and utterly exhilarating to the senses. To the Obama generation, race indeed might not exist, but then ask, does anything exist to them? "Yes, we can" do what? Whatever else he means...one thing is certain: we can feel good listening to his speeches. It is politico-spiritualist hedonism at its height.

Yet we Latter Day Saints tend to take great pride in crossing sabers with their Christian friends, but throw us a secularist or two...suddenly, we freeze in our tracks with snides remarks about "the learned who think they are wise." We're better at handling hedonism, as we often sympathize with those who indulge as not having learned better or "making some mistakes." Yet we fail to see the two activities as actually falling under the same ideological umbrella. Both camps see gospel principles as, at best, loose social pleasantries that can/should give way at the first nudge from the exception. It is not surprising that my professor proudly pointed out (in reference to professors' tendencies to drink) that academics "like to have a good time." The secularist does with the mind does what the hedonist does with the body. Separating these two camps can only be done at our (and more importantly, their) peril. They function under the same assumptions and are largely willing to legitimize the same behavior. Hedonism and secularism are not siblings, but Siamese twins.

What does this mean for the spread of Mormonism? How do we address the fluidity on its own terms while holding to the Church's well-noted moral values? After all, good ole' Chet once remarked: "Morality, like, means that you draw a line somewhere" Yet meanwhile, district meetings, sacrament meetings, and Sunday School lessons seem dominated with two major themes: 1)Why "they" (meaning those of other Christian faiths) are wrong because of the apostasy, Constantine, whatever or 2) how the world is, well...gosh darn it...so worldly.

We must develop an Ammon strategy to engage the secular skeptics (which, believe it or not, includes the party girl and the police officer alongside the professor and the accountant). Their language is different, their expressions wildly variant--but their assumptions are the same I, for one, am not as proficient as I might be...but we can learn...and in so doing, save a few souls who were waiting for someone to just start speaking their language.