You’re one of my heroes. And I don’t think it is disputable that you’re one of the best historians around.

Rex

Admitting you are brainwashed to the masses doesn’t seem like the cleverest move ever to me; it so dumb it’s something I expect more of myself.

This is so sad, we’re the same kind of wonks who will never be allowed to be friends because I don’t go to church. Bye bye, non-faith-promoting comment.

But still, Ms. Parshall, these confessions to those not of your tribe speak painfully of the sort of indoctrination that Voltaire derided when he said, more or less, “Those that can make you believe absurdities can make you admit atrocities.”

Mountain Meadows Massacre.

You’re right, by “emotional” I do not mean that my faith is based solely on some warm and teary experience after a prayer. I can recall specific instances where emotions played a role in developing what I believe, but also specific instances where reasoning through a problem was a major factor, and even more specific instances that I can’t really classify. There have been times when I have been working out a problem, or where circumstances brought up a question, and I simply “knew” the answer or what to do. Church members would probably identify those instances as owing to the gift of the Holy Ghost, or the “pure intelligence” that is claimed to be one manifestation of the Holy Ghost.

But that isn’t what I mean by “emotional vulnerabilities.” I mean emotions like fear, anger, pride, vanity, discouragement, contempt, and so on. Something that distances me from God or from other church members or from the institutional church or causes me to think I’m so much better than or can never be good enough for. I’m not identifying which of those and other emotions are especial vulnerabilities for me — you can play a guessing game with yourself based on how well you think you know me from my blogging.

But that’s what I mean. Not a failure of the warm fuzzies, or a counterfeit warm fuzzy, but anything within myself that builds a wall between me and what I know to be true.

I am in full accord with Ardis on this issue. If you choose to indict an church on the actions of a few of it’s members you are skating on thin ice. Let’s raise that to the next level, that of nations. From your name I deduce that you are either German or a member of one of several Germanic European nations. Shall we indict all of the German people for the rise and actions of the Third Reich? Shall we permanently label the Germans, and by extension, all Germanic peoples, as savages, barbarians and animals? Shall the community of nations of Europe decide that because of what they have suffered at the hands of the Nazis, the German people have eternally forfeited the right to have a sovereign nation to call their own?
Now I don’t want you to feel too picked on here. Most of my own family on my maternal side and a respectable number on my paternal side are of Germanic ancestry. Thus, if you will, I am ‘indicting’ myself.
I recognize that this is not a strict parallel. The Third Reich was the legal government of a nation, while the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a church. Virtually all of the acts of the Nazi regime were done with the consent, approval and on the direct orders of the command structure whereas this was not the case of the LDS Church in the MMM. If you look at the one of the most salient pieces of evidence found in letter copybooks of Brigham Young, you will find that Brigham Young ordered that the Fancher party were to be safely escorted through the territory and that no harm was to come to them. Brigham did not allow this messenger to get even a few hours rest, but sent him back to the southern territory on a fresh horse. At each town he passed he changed mounts to ensure that he made the fastest possible time. Notwithstanding, he tragically arrived too late. In my mind this shows that the decision to commit this atrocity rested with the local leadership. God will judge them and they will be held accountable ‘to the uttermost farthing’ if they haven’t fully repented. Nobody will ever ‘get away’ with any sin. God sees and knows all.
My testimony does not rest on those who call themselves Latter-day Saints comporting themselves
with consistently sinless, perfect behaviour. But I do know that if I hold them and their behaviour to that standard, it is by that same standard which I will be judged at the Last Judgement.
Blanket indictments or condemnations simply don’t work when dealing with groups or nations of human beings. If you make this a permanent policy of your judgement and study European history in any detail, you would be forced to condemn all of the peoples of Europe as being beyond redemption. Consider the slaughter of the Cathars (Albigensians), the Hundred Years War, or the Huguenots experience in France on Saint Barthomew’s Day in 1572. I shouldn’t need to go on, if you are a European you should be well acquainted with the history. Finally, I should mention that it wasn’t just Catholics engaged in these horrors, the Protestants were equally adept and guilty. Before religion was the motivator, it was politics; with lords, lieges, and knights slaughtering both the soldiers and peasants of their neighboring lords. With blanket condemnations, it is easy to conclude that these Europeans are a savage, reprehensible and irredeemable lot. Sorry, I won’t go there because I know far too many wonderful citizens from several European nations. As I refuse to be that inflexible or absolutist in my judgements of Europeans, so I won’t judge the Church or the Mormon people that way either.

My first mission president was a challenge. Fortunately, I had a second one.

Thanks for this.

Shauna noticed that every definition applies, and they all require strength and effort on the part of the one doing the sustaining. It’s nice to see such strength as yours over the years.

I’ve got my own testimony located in a range of things that provide “cause to believe,” which I see (following Ninian Smart) as from responses to (1) external impressions regarding: Order and creativity in the world, the Common mythic symbols and patterns underlying most religious traditions, Key historical events that define separate traditions and bind individuals.

(2)Through the innermost experiences of the individual, including Numinous awe and reverence,
Mystical union, Moral obligation, Reorientation and Reconciliation with respect to personal sin, guilt, and weakness, the existence of evil, suffering, and death, and tensions between science and faith.
(3) Then returning to the external world as human action, such as Personal dialogue where you begin interpret external events as God speaking to you, and you answer through your own actions, and at last in Social and Ritual behavior.

Mine is a complicated, ongoing weaving of many threads, not a brittle crystal, let alone a soap bubble.

Giving thanks,

Kevin Christensen
Bethel Park, PA

This morning there were seven comments and trackbacks about this post, none of which will make it to public view. I might be better off not responding to them in any way, except that it’s possible that some readers who are welcome to participate here have misread this post in the same ways:

Please note that I don’t claim that I am immune to all attacks on my faith. I’m not — nobody is — and it would be dangerous for anyone to think that her testimony were so unassailable as some of these DAMU commenters have misread. What I said, or at least what I *thought* I said and absolutely what I meant, is that I’m not susceptible to being shocked or shattered or destroyed by learning about any actions of any men or women in church history — “all the history that they never taught.” The bad acts, or the supposed bad acts, of anyone from the past pose no more challenge to my faith in the gospel than the bad acts of my mission president because I now understand not just with my head but with my whole soul the obvious fact that men aren’t perfect and may not always live up to their callings.

Is that such a revolutionary idea? News to anyone? It was worth writing about here, I thought, because I learned it — and I mean really learned it, not just read it somewhere and agreed that it was logical — because of identifiable circumstances that might have been (and judging from response, are) of interest and utility to some readers.

His personal story is different from mine, but Davis Bitton makes the same general point in his I Don’t Have a Testimony of the History of the Church, which may be the most worthwhile essay ever written on how someone can be thoroughly conversant with church history and remain faithful to the Church and to the gospel.

But I’m as vulnerable as anybody else to attacks on my faith from other directions, especially emotional ones. I still have to guard against weaknesses that I know I have. It’s just that what I’ve written about here is not a weakness — and it’s amusing as well as tedious to read trash comments from the DAMU written with the arrogance that if I only know this and this and this about church history (which they obligingly spell out for me as if I’ve never heard of such things before), then my faith will collapse and I’ll hail them as princes of my deliverance from the shackles of Mormonism. Not going to happen, boys; you don’t know anything I don’t know, you don’t know a tiny part of what you think you know, and you don’t write well enough to persuade me to buy a quart of milk from you.

Ditto for the amateur philosophers who send me variations of “Well, yeah, but — if purple people eaters from outer space sprinkle magic fairy dust on you and offer you a coconut macaroon for leaving the Church, you would, wouldn’t you? So your faith isn’t as strong as you claim, nyah-nyah!” Really? That’s the best you can offer? Not in the market today, thank you; peddle it elsewhere.

Finally, I know that my faith, my personality, my body even, are sources of amusement in some rotten quarters. Anybody who speaks or writes or leaves the house in the morning can be subject to that. It’s not pleasant, but neither is it anything that I lose sleep over. I post where anybody can read, and it’s no skin off my nose when people talk about me behind my back. It’s a little different, though, when someone from the DAMU comes here and custom orders material for his mockery.

So I’ve cleaned the muck out of the spam filter, and off we all go, hopefully to enjoy a peaceful and bounteous Thanksgiving Day. My best to all of you. God is good, and we all have much to be thankful for.

I hereby nominate this for some kind of an award. (wink)