DiscussMormonism.com

Great new article from Adam Gopnik. Read it.

I thought this was a great passage:

And then the Book of Mormon, unlike anything in the five books of the Torah, is told in a kind of flat first person: the book’s opening chapters all begin with the formula “I, Nephi.” This was not just an American Bible; it was a Bible with an evangelical, camp-meeting tone laid over the Old Testament vocabulary. The testimonial is the essential genre of the Great Awakening, and the Book of Mormon, for all its pastiche, is at heart a testimonial—starting with Nephi’s own account of how he got his people here. Even if you didn’t stay to find out what I, Nephi, did, the fact that I, Nephi, did it counted for a lot. Among other Christian texts, perhaps only the Gnostic Gospels of the early Christian centuries use the first person in quite this way. (Luke and Revelation begin with a personal introduction, but aren’t really personal stories.) And, though the charge of Gnosticism was often directed at them maliciously by other Christians, Mormonism does have a definite Gnostic aroma. Like the Gnostics, the Mormons thought that the conventional texts had too much atonement and too little attainment. Mormonism objects to making a big deal of the morbid agony of Jesus on the Cross at the expense of the more cheerful apparition of Man-made-into-God. This is why there are no crosses on Mormon temples; our guy triumphed far more than he suffered.

Smith mimicked the endless, generation-counting longueurs of the Old Testament so skillfully that he rendered the book dead as literature while giving it credibility as a sacred text: a book as boring as this could have been inspired only by the breath of God.

Lol

Most excellent. That's the best article on Mormonism I have read this year (and there have been many published).

America, one might fairly say, had two foundings: the first under the Enlightenment guidance of its rich intellectual founders, and a second with the popular, evangelical Second Great Awakening, which flamed a quarter century afterward. Ever since, the two have, like the Lamanites and the Nephites, been at war for the soul of the country, with the politics not always easily predictable; it was really the Awakening side that led to abolitionism. (Smith ran for President on an advanced abolitionist platform, in 1844.) Over time, the spiritual descendants of the Awakening have sought to annex Enlightenment doctrines, chiefly through the claim that the Founders were not skeptical Enlightenment deists but passionate Evangelical fundamentalists, while the Enlightenment-minded have tried to annex the Awakening’s passionate energy to their causes, as in the civil-rights movement, where black churches became the emotional engine of what was, on its face, a legal argument about public facilities. Mormonism is a child of this fracture. In one way, it is a product of the Enlightenment love of secret histories and societies and rococo cosmologies—a “Magic Flute” for America, sung with a massed choir. (Many of its rituals and symbols seem to have a source in Freemasonry; Smith was an inducted Mason.) But it is also an instance of popular religious turbulence, not at all esoteric in its appeal but fully open to the world and evangelical in spirit.

It would have really been funny if he ended his article quoting Monson's "One, two, three let's go shopping."

I liked his summary of the early persecution:

Forced out of New York by an earlier version of that fierce Protestant hostility, Smith and his followers began their years of wandering. Wherever they went, they infuriated the non-Mormon locals, and also managed to infuriate one another: the early history of the movement involves a bewildering series of excommunications, internal banishments, and the increasing threat of violence to enforce new rules as Smith received them. Smith was eventually martyred by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, while in the local jail awaiting trial for treason. Which of his doctrines enraged the mob is hard to grasp, but it may have been sex more than heresy. You could have as many doctrines as you liked, but not as many wives.

It is a pretty good article, especially considering how short it is. I was glad to see him mentioning Phillip Roth; in fact I was just recalling Roth's great story, "Defender of the Faith," the other day, since it reminds me a bit of some of the manipulations of the Mopologists. The most interesting part of the article, in my opinion, was the bit where Gopnik talks about the tension within Mormonism--the pull, on the one hand, to be a "peculiar people" vs. the pull, on the other hand, to win acceptance--and the way that this tension has gotten swallowed up in this larger culture of capitalist enterprise and wish-making.

Just look at DCP's recent blog entry, where he says he was creeped out by the closing ceremonies at the Olympics, which leads him into a long-winded ridiculing of John Lennon's "Imagine," followed by a protracted attack on atheism, and ultimately wrapping up with an essentially prayerful worship of free-market capitalism. What God do the Mopologists worship? Given some of the stuff that came to light in the wake of the MI shake-up--what with all the admissions about high-ticket donors, and fundraising activities, and trips to Turkey and so on--it's clear that they are deep into precisely the things that Gopnik describes. I kind of wonder to what extent that their uglier, more hardcore tactics (e.g., the attacks on Dehlin; Bill Hamblin's exclusionary list; Will Schryver's hunting for "Fifth Columnists") are tied into this sort of thing. I get where the basic tension is, but what is it that the Mopologists expect to gain here? Where is the "profit" for them? Ideological purity? Or is it really as simple as cold, hard cash and "prosperity"--of eliminating the competition? After all, I suspect that Joanna Brooks, John Dehlin, and the rest of this popular "NOM" set can expect to have a much larger market share than clowns like Dan Peterson and Bill Hamblin.

I suppose you have to accept that the Mopologists don't genuinely care about doctrine and theology, and that their actions really are more about this tension--this war--than about "substantive issues," but, then again, look at their actions, their online behavior, their publications. Look at their less-guarded stuff: the emails on SHIELDS, the Bradford email, and Bill Hamblin's unrestrained blog eruptions. It's hard, for me anyhow, to see this as being strictly a matter of them having an honest-to-goodness stake in helping to clarify and define Mormon identity, doctrine, and issues. It really does seem more like they are just trying to stake out their own share of the market--just like Gopnik suggests.

Interesting food for thought, in any case.

Which of his doctrines enraged the mob is hard to grasp, but it may have been sex more than heresy. You could have as many doctrines as you liked, but not as many wives.

I disagree here, but otherwise it is good. I think he suspects the truth, because he admits:

Smith was eventually martyred by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, while in the local jail awaiting trial for treason.

Not adultery, they weren't vigorously pursuing the charges of destruction of a printing press, but treason. What was the nature of that treason, one might ask.

Deterioration of the Oneida community into a company that makes silverware is a good analogy, and maybe contains a trace of doubt about primacy of the polygamy issue.

Excellent.

Here the people who seem likely to inherit power are those who want to blow still bigger ones, who believe in the bubble even after it has burst, and who hold its perfection as a faith so gleaming and secure and unbreakable that it might once have been written down somewhere by angels, on solid-gold plates.

You know, the more I think about it, the more that Gopnik's ideas about Mormonism and Mormons wanting to seem "prosperous" above all else is a really interesting lens through which to view things like the Mopologetic phenomenon, among other things. In the wider world of Mormon culture you get things like the Osmonds and Romney, where financial success is the way to access this narrative. In Mopologetics, this holds true as well, though there is this added element of needing to seem "prosperous" in terms of annhilating the enemy. The Mopologists seem to think that they won't seem successful unless their critics are humilated, crushed, etc. "Success is the best revenge" just isn't enough for these guys: they can brag about (their friends or acquaintances) publishing with Oxford Press, or about flying to Jerusalem and Switzerland, or how slick their new e-journal looks, or how much access they have to wealthy donors' pockets. None of this will ever be enough, though.

MCB wrote:

Which of his doctrines enraged the mob is hard to grasp, but it may have been sex more than heresy. You could have as many doctrines as you liked, but not as many wives.

I disagree here, but otherwise it is good. I think he suspects the truth, because he admits:

Smith was eventually martyred by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, while in the local jail awaiting trial for treason.

Not adultery, they weren't vigorously pursuing the charges of destruction of a printing press, but treason. What was the nature of that treason, one might ask.

Treason was the official charge that got him imprisoned. The mob was a bunch of Joseph Smith haters that wanted him dead for any number of reasons.

Plenty of reasons. But the sad truth is that he was not the only guilty party. If anything, he was less guilty than some.