Volume I, Issue III
Cassius University, 2010
Review by Darth J
To retain plausible deniability, the views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the position of Cassius University, Mormon Discussions, or the author himself.
Review of Emma Marr Petersen, "About Baptism: A child's story about the meaning and purpose of baptism." Salt Lake City: Copyright 1957 by Bookcraft, Inc. (26th Printing 1980). 71 pages (no footnotes or bibliography whatsoever). No original cover price on the copy being reviewed; free when your grandma and grandpa give it to you. (Short quotes from the work reviewed have quote marks; longer quotes are in blue text.)
Every once in a while, I like to take a rest from apologists and internet crusaders and take a fond look back at what actual Mormons believe. If you share that nostalgia for the good old days when there wasn't a world-wide computer network for heretics to tell you that you do not understand the church in which you were born and raised, then "About Baptism" may help you scratch that itch. It was published by Bookcraft, a former imprint of Deseret Book, and went through at least 26 printings. That should give you some idea as to whether "About Baptism" reflects what real, chapel Mormons are thinking.
Despite the cover picture on the edition of the book shown above, no girls are baptized in the story.
The story begins with Paul Jensen, a precocious 7 year-old who lives in Utah and is looking forward to the arrival of his cousin Lauritz (whom he calls "Larry") from Denmark. Larry's dad, a fisherman, recently died when his fishing boat sank on the ocean. Soon afterwards, his mother gets sick and dies. Paul's mother is the sister of Larry's dearly departed mother and is originally from Denmark, and when Paul's family learns that Larry is an orphan, they write to the friends in Denmark who are taking care of Larry and say they want Larry to come live with them in America. This communication is possible because Paul's mother speaks Danish.
An LDS missionary who is finishing his mission in Denmark accompanies Larry on the plane ride to America. The book informs us that Larry expressly does not want to go by ship because his father died in a boating accident. Larry apparently is not so worried about the prospect of an airplane going down in flames and his small body being charred like a charcoal briquette during his final moments of horror and pain while his metal coffin plummets into the ocean at a terminal velocity that causes the doomed aircraft to hit the water like a plastic model hitting concrete (I added this part).
The airplane ride goes smoothly, however, and Larry and the unnamed returning missionary arrive at the airport in Salt Lake City and are greeted by Paul and his mom and dad. Paul's mom, whom we know only as "Sister Jensen," jabbers expressively in Danish to Larry, while Paul and Brother Jensen just smile, "a language both could understand."
This reviewer is not a native of Utah and did not live in Utah when this book first came to his attention. But still, those were the days, weren't they? When Utah-centrism and Scandinavian ethnicity were just a given in LDS culture. Before we had apologists like Scott Lloyd ridiculing "folk Mormons."
There are many warm-fuzzy irrelevancies in the story as well. As soon as they get home from the airport, "Sister Jensen served them all Danish pan cakes [sic] and honey, with lost of nice cold milk. It reminded Larry of home." The next few chapters have absolutely nothing to do with baptism. Larry apparently learns to speak fluent English in a couple of days, and then he and Paul have adventures like fishing (which luckily does not traumatize Larry by reminding him of his dad being killed while fishing), hiking in the hills and canyons around what seems to be but is not explicitly stated as the suburbs of Salt Lake City, the boys' dog having a non-injurious tussle with a badger, swimming in the Great Salt Lake (where Larry eats his first hot dog!), riding a horse on the farm where more of the extended family lives.
Whether consciously or not, what the author is doing is showing how this family is trying to make this little boy feel like one of them. It is a snapshot of Mormon culture: generally nice, kind people who try to have a happy family and have some bizarre religious mythology that informs their views about this way of life. Then Larry is riding a bike in the street and is hit by a car. His leg is broken, but he just has to wear a cast for a while. As the chapter in which this happens is titled, Larry's experience is just "A Lesson Learned the Hard Way."
Not everyone who grows up LDS successfully experiences this Little House on the Prairie by way of The Brady Bunch lifestyle, but it's a cultural ideal. The ideal held by decent people that apologists now mock as "folk Mormons" who do not really understand Mormonism with the profundity and nuance that the apologists do, while insisting that the chapel/internet Mormon dichotomy is a myth.
After 31 pages (out of 71) of set up, it's finally time for the author to engage what the book is about. We are suddenly informed that the Jensen family has been having family home evening every week, which was never mentioned during the previous months of Utah travelogue. Brother Jensen tells the boys during this sudden family home evening they've really been having regularly all along that "as soon as boys and girls in the Church are eight years old they should be baptized."
Larry does not know what baptism means because his father in Denmark had no religion and did not like the LDS missionaries. This conflicts somewhat with Larry being taken care of and seen off at the airport by the members of the Church in Denmark, who seem to know him, but the narrative moves on. Brother Jensen explains to the boys that we all lived in heaven before we were born. But, just as many sappy high school dance slow songs ask, Brother Jensen wonders aloud, where is heaven? The boys are unable to answer, not being ready to address such philosophical and theological questions because they are seven years old. Brother Jensen tells the boys that heaven is where Heavenly Father lives, but will soon get much more specific about that. Brother Jensen then says that if we want to go back to heaven, we have to join the One True Church.
Showing the incisive reasoning that second graders are known for, Paul asks why there are so many different churches. Brother Jensen's answer? "Those churches are not all the same. They are very different indeed." He returns to talking about heaven, so now Paul asks where heaven is.
"Come outside with me for a minute," his father said.
Wait a minute? Is Brother Jensen really going to take the boys outside and show them where heaven is? Yes, he kind of is.
It is a clear night outside, and Brother Jensen brings his "big field glasses."
"There are so many start in the sky that no one can count them," said Paul's mother. "Most of them are bigger than our earth---even larger than our sun which is many times larger than the earth"
"That's right," said Brother Jensen, "and our Father in Heaven made them all."
"Does he live on one of them?" now asked Larry.
"He surely does," said Brother Jensen. "He lives on the most wonderful star in the sky, and he takes care of all the others from there."
Actually, our Father in Heaven lives on a planet orbiting the most wonderful star in the sky, but these are just folk Mormons who don't understand the nuances and subtleties of Mormonism like apologists do.
The family then goes back inside, and the boys learn that Jesus was sent to Earth to be our great teacher, and that he organized a church with Twelve Apostles. But after Jesus went back to heaven (the boys now having an idea of where this is physically located), wicked men killed the apostles and many members of Jesus' church.
"Later other men tried to make churches of their own. But they did not understand the gospel. Many men made churches of their own, each using his own ideas and teachings. The Lord did not guide them, so they made many mistakes. That is why there are so many different churches in the world today."
And so, as the boys learn, the teenage Joseph Smith spoke face to face with Heavenly Father and Jesus and,
"Jesus told Joseph not to join any of them, because they had been made by men who did not follow the teachings of the Lord."
A later generation would perhaps have learned from apologists that Jesus was just talking about the churches in the immediate vicinity of Palmyra, but remember that this story is set in the good old days.
Then the angel Moroni comes.
"Moroni said that Joseph had been chosen by the Lord to receive an ancient record called the Book of Mormon. It was a sacred history of early America, engraved on plates of gold.
The ancient Americans were the forefathers of the Indians of today. They came from Jerusalem. Prophets led them to America."
Oh, those silly folk Mormons. Little did they realize that the plates were not made of gold, and that the LDS Church has never taught that modern day American Indians are the descendants of Hebrew immigrants. Reading books like "About Baptism," which went through 26 printings by a church-owned publisher, one might get the mistaken impression that Mopologists have invented their own fantasy of what it's like to be a Mormon, and that they are the ones who do not understand Mormonism.
As this marathon session of family home evening that lasts through seven chapters continues, Paul and Larry learn that while translating the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery chanced upon a passage about baptism (I guess they had never heard of baptism before) and wondered if they needed to get baptized. They went out in the woods, where John the Baptist came down from heaven (which Paul and Larry had recently seen through binoculars) and gave Joseph and Oliver the authority to baptize each other.
Having realized that to be with Jesus and live up on that star with him they will have to be baptized, Paul and Larry both say they want to be baptized and ask how it is done. Brother Jensen explains that first they have to sit down with the bishop, who "will ask if you want to be baptized and if you are good boys. Then he will give each of you a little printed piece of paper called a recommend which he signs, showing that you are ready."
I must agree with Brother Jensen that this process would greatly streamline and get to the essence of what bishop's interviews are supposed to be about. "Are you a good boy?" "Yes." "Okay, here's your temple recommend."
After they get a recommend, on the Saturday before Fast Sunday the family will go to the Tabernacle (that's what the book says), the boys will dress in white, and Brother Jensen "will baptize you by lowering you quickly but gently into the water, and taking you out again just as quickly." This explanation elicits a trenchant question from Paul: "But why do we have to join it [the Church], Dad? I don't understand it yet." Brother Jensen explains that it is like Larry coming to America. If Larry had stayed in Denmark, he would have always been a Danish boy and would not live with the Jensens now as an American boy.
"It is the same with the Church," Brother Jensen went on. "We might say that the Church is a house---the House of God, and all who are in it belong to the family of God, just as we here in this house all belong to one family. Since Larry could not be an American boy without coming here and joining an American family, so we cannot be members of the family of God unless we enter his house, or join his Church."
Woe unto those who reject this gospel, and are destined to remain in Denmark for eternity!
As the evidently hours-long family home evening continues, Paul wants to know, "What do we have to do after we join the Church?"
"Just go on living very much as we do now," said his Dad. You are already living the gospel, because that is the way we all live here in our family. If you had been born in another family where the gospel was not lived at home, you would have to change your ways and do what the Lord commands. But we here in our family are trying to do that now."
Ah, that subtle air of superiority, inculcated at such a young age. But it is not enough for a young TBM boy to feel self-righteous because his family is better than the families of non-members. He needs to feel neurotic, too, so Mom and Dad make sure to list all of the things the boys need to worry about even though Brother Jensen just barely said they were already doing the right things. Now, the coming-of-age story reaches its climax, as these seven year-olds realize that if they want to make Jesus happy and go live on a star with him, they must confront their inner demons. Page 57:
"Now you boys think of the bad habits you may have, and then try to overcome them before you are baptized, so that you will be forgiven by the Lord as you come up out of the water."
Paul spoke up now. He had an idea.
"I know one thing I will change," he said. "I always throw rocks at Anderson's cat. I'll stop doing that."
"And I won't come in the house with muddy feet any more," said Larry.
"And I will come when you call me, Mother," said Paul.
"And I will feed Jeff [the family dog] outside, and not at the table," said Larry.
"That's right boys," said Brother Jensen. "Think of all the bad habits you can remember."
By now, one realizes that a family home evening as described in this book would have been long indeed. The Jensens realize this too, and replenish the boys with ice cream and cake before sending them to bed.
Later, as the boys overhear Mom and Dad talking about being confirmed, Larry is confused and asks what it means to be confirmed. He is told that it means we get the Holy Ghost, who apparently is quite a diva, since he is offended and leaves us if we do anything wrong at all.
"If we do wrong, we drive the Holy Spirit away from us. Our sinful acts offend the Spirit, and it draws away from us and no longer helps us. So you see why we need to live right every day."
Now it is time for the boys to have their birthday parties. Paul has a roller skating party. Larry has a hot dog and doughnut party (you just leave your innuendos out of this) and gets the sled he had been wanting. Afterward, they are provided a a choice program. No, disregard that last thing---I was thinking of the wrong story. Larry is deeply affected by his party.
The Jensens were certainly good to him, he thought. That night, as he thanked them for the wonderful party and the sled, he asked them if there was something he could do to really thank them for all they had done for him. Sister Jensen took him in her arms and said, "Just keep on loving us---and be a good boy---that will be thanks enough."
Luckily, the Jensens have been teaching Larry that being a good boy means getting baptized! And he and Paul do so. They are baptized on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday, and our story gives us this final glimpse of Larry and the Jensens:
As the boys walked home with Brother and Sister Jensen, Paul said, "Well, Larry, how do you feel?" "Great," said the little orphan boy. "I feel like I really belong to you folks now---and to the Lord."
One wonders if the author really thought about the scenario she was creating. A seven year-old orphan from another country comes to live with his aunt and uncle. They do lots of fun family activities and he wants to make them happy. They have taught him about how wonderful being baptized is. Paul is a seven year-old who has grown up in an LDS family and only has a vague notion that their are other churches, all of which he has been told are false.
Are these second graders really able to understand making a lifelong commitment, which is what baptism is meant to entail? Is Larry getting baptized because he really understands and believes in Mormonism, or because he is an orphan and a foreigner with no realistic alternative---and who wants to please his aunt and uncle on top of that? Is Paul getting baptized because he really understands and believes in Mormonism, or because that is the environment in which he was raised?
In any case, Larry and Paul both live in or near Salt Lake City. The Church does not hide or downplay any of the problem areas with its faith-promoting narrative. Larry and Paul could have gone down to the Church History Library and looked through old manuscripts and microfilm to learn about all these things. They freely chose to be in the circumstances they were in at age seven. If someday they find troubling things about the faith in which they were raised, clearly they have no one to blame but themselves.
