Hamblin's Creed

[_Cicero]

By the way, Kish and others condemn Hamblin's approach because they say he wants to delegitimize John Dehlin and the NOMs for his own reasons. This is probably true. Has anyone ever asked what John Dehlin is attempting to do when he publicly identifies as Mormon? Is Dehlin attempting to legitimize himself with a largely Mormon audience? If you acknowledge this, then you're really acknowledging that Hamblin is right in his argument, or that, at best, both are wrong.

But if you try to assert that both are wrong and that only your way of using the label is correct, then you are claiming for yourself the very authority over the term that you decry Hamblin for usurping. I don't think you get to have it both ways.

Dehlin has said before that he cannot ever "stop" being Mormon because it is in his bones. Mormonism is still relatively young, and so many people have strongly adverse reactions when people claim that "Mormons" are an emerging ethnic group as Blixa has, but I personally wouldn't know what to identify myself as other than as a Mormon. I am a sixth-generation BIC Mormon that grew up in Utah, and so I know exactly what Dehlin means when he says that he is Mormon in his core.

The key difference between Hamblin's approach and what Kish, Blixa and I are arguing is that Hamblin is claiming authority over the term and we are not. Unlike you, I don't think the institutional COJCLDS should have authority over the term either (they DO have authority over who can be called a member of their organization, but that is different). The Church is by far the largest remaining group within the broader "Mormon movement" started by Joseph Smith, but they are by no means the only one.

If someone that had never even heard of Joseph Smith claimed to be a Mormon, I would find it very odd, but I certainly wouldn't tell that person that they can't call themselves a Mormon. I am fine with people adding additional labels to make certain distinctions (e.g., fundamentalist, NOM, Jack, etc.), but I would never take upon myself the authority to tell anyone that they cannot identify themselves as Mormons.

[_Bob Loblaw]

I'm a Mormon by heritage. Too much of who and what I am is a direct result of having lived most of my life as a practicing Mormon. It would be stupid of me to claim I am something else.

[_Kishkumen]

By the way, Kish and others condemn Hamblin's approach because they say he wants to delegitimize John Dehlin and the NOMs for his own reasons. This is probably true. Has anyone ever asked what John Dehlin is attempting to do when he publicly identifies as Mormon? Is Dehlin attempting to legitimize himself with a largely Mormon audience? If you acknowledge this, then you're really acknowledging that Hamblin is right in his argument, or that, at best, both are wrong.

But if you try to assert that both are wrong and that only your way of using the label is correct, then you are claiming for yourself the very authority over the term that you decry Hamblin for usurping. I don't think you get to have it both ways.

John Dehlin is declaring his own Mormon identity when he uses the term. He is not excluding others from Mormonism by doing so. John Dehlin's Mormon identity falls comfortably within the range of acceptable descriptive uses of the term Mormon. If he is legitimizing himself, it is only in speaking openly about the Mormon identity that many people in the LDS Church silently share with him. The key difference is in his candor in speaking up.

I really don't see how that acknowledges that Hamblin is right about anything. All that I am doing is distinguishing the rhetorical bullying of Hamblin's prescription for Mormon identity against John Dehlin's ability to identify himself accurately according to more descriptive criteria. If you acknowledge the difference between prescriptive and descriptive approaches to identity, then I can only really see you accepting Hamblin's view if you share his opinion or seek to use it for your own rhetorical advantage, because it is clearly not just a descriptive approach to Mormon identity.

[Guest]

I'm a Mormon by heritage. Too much of who and what I am is a direct result of having lived most of my life as a practicing Mormon. It would be stupid of me to claim I am something else.

Hi Bob, are you a current member or an ex member?
If you are an ex member are you guilty (perhaps the wrong word) of using the description of 'Mormon' on the same basis as you would describe yourself as 'American' rather than the religion that Mormon refers to?

[_MrStakhanovite]

What Hamblin is doing isn’t wrong in and of itself, but how and why he is doing it is wrong. Every religious community has to decide who is in and who is out, and usually that responsibility falls on a person whom the religious community recognizes as its leader. Be it Rabbi, Bishop, Elder, or Prophet, that person gets to lay down the criteria.

Hamblin isn’t that person. He is doing something so far above his pay grade I consider it disrespectful to the one person who has that authority, the church president.

[_Aristotle Smith]

Hamblin isn’t that person. He is doing something so far above his pay grade I consider it disrespectful to the one person who has that authority, the church president.

Here's the problem, Mormon leaders have done this and they agree 100% with Hamblin.

http://Mormon.org/what-do-mormons-believe

Actually, Hamblin is just parroting what Mormon leaders have already laid down. Just like he is supposed to do.

[_Blixa]

By the way, Kish and others condemn Hamblin's approach because they say he wants to delegitimize John Dehlin and the NOMs for his own reasons. This is probably true. Has anyone ever asked what John Dehlin is attempting to do when he publicly identifies as Mormon? Is Dehlin attempting to legitimize himself with a largely Mormon audience? If you acknowledge this, then you're really acknowledging that Hamblin is right in his argument, or that, at best, both are wrong.

But if you try to assert that both are wrong and that only your way of using the label is correct, then you are claiming for yourself the very authority over the term that you decry Hamblin for usurping. I don't think you get to have it both ways.

Dehlin has said before that he cannot ever "stop" being Mormon because it is in his bones. Mormonism is still relatively young, and so many people have strongly adverse reactions when people claim that "Mormons" are an emerging ethnic group as Blixa has, but I personally wouldn't know what to identify myself as other than as a Mormon. I am a sixth-generation BIC Mormon that grew up in Utah, and so I know exactly what Dehlin means when he says that he is Mormon in his core.

The key difference between Hamblin's approach and what Kish, Blixa and I are arguing is that Hamblin is claiming authority over the term and we are not. Unlike you, I don't think the institutional COJCLDS should have authority over the term either (they DO have authority over who can be called a member of their organization, but that is different). The Church is by far the largest remaining group within the broader "Mormon movement" started by Joseph Smith, but they are by no means the only one.

If someone that had never even heard of Joseph Smith claimed to be a Mormon, I would find it very odd, but I certainly wouldn't tell that person that they can't call themselves a Mormon. I am fine with people adding additional labels to make certain distinctions (e.g., fundamentalist, NOM, Jack, etc.), but I would never take upon myself the authority to tell anyone that they cannot identify themselves as Mormons.

Cicero pretty accurately reflects my position.

[_Blixa]

Hamblin isn’t that person. He is doing something so far above his pay grade I consider it disrespectful to the one person who has that authority, the church president.

Here's the problem, Mormon leaders have done this and they agree 100% with Hamblin.

http://Mormon.org/what-do-mormons-believe

Actually, Hamblin is just parroting what Mormon leaders have already laid down. Just like he is supposed to do.

That's just fine for members of COJCOLDS. But, I think we all recognize that "Mormon" also names people and groups beyond only the contemporary configuration of the COJCOLDS.

[_Kishkumen]

I think it is important to distinguish between statements that establish a rubric for a normative belief system from those that are established to prescribe the terms upon which one may maintain membership in the group. Hamblin sets his up to act passively as a self-evaluating prescription. Knowing he has no authority to push his position, he nevertheless sets up terms that he would hope any LDS person would use to evaluate themselves in terms of their Mormon-ness.

In the actual Church, belief is evaluated formally at relatively few different points in a member's life. The most thorough is probably the temple recommend interview. It seems to me that otherwise the bar for belief demanded of any person in the pews is fairly low. At the very least, you are expected not to cause a stir by publishing controversial and heterodox things, or teaching them as though they were church doctrine.

[_Yoda]

Since Cicero mentioned what was posted on RfM regarding John Dehlin, I read a few of the comments over there. I would be interested in examining this critique:

Posting anon because I've been ridiculed in this phorum for criticizing
JD in the past. This time I am only going to focus on his own words.
Mostly.

I read the transcript to save myself the tearful
delivery. Five pages of cognitive dissonance at its finest. The author's
emotional connections interfere with his capacity to process and
evaluate the facts he cannot deny, and his emotional links with church
and family keep him from leaving. I wondered, when he said he didn't
want to see his kids sitting in church alone, why he would have them to
sit there at all. He may recognize the elitism but in the end he wants
to be part of the "0.5 of 1%" that what passes for his God loves and
directs through a corporation sole.

I do not understand how a
mature adult can attribute both his virtues and his vices on an external
structure of any kind, and evidence of that mindset appears in his
words.

First the virtues. He says, "I stay because the church continually reminds and motivates me to try harder to be a good
father, and a good husband. And I need these reminders."

Really?
He can't look around his house and remind himself? The faces of his
loved ones and the love of his children cannot provide the internal
motivation for him to be "a good" anything? Such motivation should come
from within a person. And any human situation can provide a reminder to
be "good." That perception should not depend on anything external.

And
now the vices. This sentence was the only one in bold, so I assume it
is the key point in his litany of arguments. "I stay because I still
love this church. As dysfunctional, as broken and as misguided as it
behaves sometimes – it is no more dysfunctional, broken or misguided
than I am – if I’m being honest with myself." The church "behaves" and
"I am". That seems so twisted to me. He seems to be able to say he is
broken, misguided, and dysfunctional, though the insitution merely
*behaves* that way *sometimes*. If he were to make an exact comparison,
he would have said the church "is" those things or he "does" them,
behaves that way sometimes. It is as if retaining his membership
facilitates his identifying himself with those qualities--a strange form
of projection. And an abdication of his responsibility to himself and
his family and his community.

I found it interesting, a strange
affirmation of his willingness to identify himself in these terms and to
perpetuate those qualities, to see them amplified around him. It is as
if he is unwilling to be responsible for his own virtues and vices--and
to determine his own course of action without the dictates of his tribe
and maybe his own conscience.

Someone in his chosen profession
should have the capacity of self-governance to some degree in order to
counsel others to do the same. Or maybe I don't get what therapy is
about.

Which brings me to a final observation about people who selectively invoke God and Christ as exemplars.

Jesus
is the gold standard. He threw the money changers out of the temple.
The people who run the church have blatantly revealed themselves to be
money changers. Wouldn't it be most Christlike to run the bastards out
of the holy spaces they have set up as a cash commodity--ten percent for
"exaltation"?

And Jesus was willing to give his life for the
truth he spoke. Willing to be nailed to a cross rather than take back
what he said. What's a little excommunication for apostasy in exchange
for the integrity of one's words and actions?

Which is why reason
is one thing and belief is another. And when they conflict, people find
reasons to justify belief at the expense of reason.

Although I disagreed with most of what this poster said, and I will get into details later, one thing he did say struck an interesting chord with me:

Jesus
is the gold standard. He threw the money changers out of the temple.
The people who run the church have blatantly revealed themselves to be
money changers. Wouldn't it be most Christlike to run the bastards out
of the holy spaces they have set up as a cash commodity--ten percent for
"exaltation"?

The whole bit about being a full tithe payer to attend the temple, and having that be the final "end-all, be-all" of the temple interview has always bothered me. It seems like you can fall slightly short on a lot of the other questions, but write a check and everything is OK. The same in reverse. You can be stalwart and answer every questions sincerely in the affirmative, but if you have fallen on hard times, and have been unable to pay your tithing in full, you are denied the blessings of the temple.

When my daughter got married last summer, we were in the scary predicament of being behind on our tithing. We really were not sure if we were going to be able to catch up. We managed, but it wasn't easy. The price was whether or not we would be able to see our daughter sealed. There is just something not quite right about that, in my opinion.