The LDS Church, Immigration, and Moral Courage
Is the LDS Church making a concerted effort to educate and teach tolerance to its members on the issue of illegal immigration, albeit indirectly? Consider: on Saturday the Deseret News published a lengthy article addressing “myths” of illegal immigration that largely debunked common notions of the country losing billions to immigrants via unpaid taxes, lost jobs, healthcare, welfare, etc. Then today KSL had an editorial endorsing Salt Lake City police chief Chris Burbank who has come under intense criticism for his negative assessment of Arizona’s new law.
This may absolutely be a coincidence but I doubt it. Historically the church has used its news outlets as a way to have its views heard. Officially the church has been cautious in its comments but has always emphasized compassion and understanding for “millions of people.” I think it’s safe to assume they aren’t referring to pissed off tea partiers angry that their lettuce-picking job went to an illegal immigrant.
After seeing the church on the wrong side of the Prop 8 issue (yup, I’m still devastated and I don’t think I’ll ever get over it) it’s so heartening to see them take the compassionate track on an issue with some of the most vulnerable in our society demonized, even called “mules” by the governor of Arizona recently. That said, I’m still disappointed over the church’s obsessive paranoia on speaking out on any issue except gay marriage. I don’t understand how a church with the name Jesus Christ in its title doesn’t have an “official position” on war, torture, healthcare, the environment, the death penalty, and yes, illegal immigration. Moral issues go beyond right-wing boilerplate like gays and abortion, and the church’s silence on these issues is perplexing. Then again, perhaps I’m foolish for thinking I know how the church would come down on these topics that strike me as morally important.
I’m disappointed too that Mormonism hasn’t worked out a consistent position that can be applied in some way to guide moral decision making on every issue. I think it has the seeds of something that can work in the notion of eternal progression so that anything that works against the growth and enlargement of the human soul is evil and anything that promotes that growth is good. (Similar, I know, to Martin Luther King, Jr. and his criteria–stated in Letter from Birmingham Jail–for determining between just and unjust laws: “An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”) With criteria based on the notion that growth of souls is the ultimate good, Latter-day Saints could develop robust positions on all social issues. Instead, however, right now most leaders seem unable or unwilling to see in this broad way and the Church ends up reactionary rather than pro-active on social issues.
All of this, of course, is complicated by the difficult position one is in as a Mormon leader. I normally balk at quoting Orson Scott Card, who I think has become quite reactionary in recent years, but he once wrote something quite powerful about why outside voices are better at playing the prophet role rather than the institutional guys who actually have that calling. In a review of Eugene England’s book, Why the Church Is As True As the Gospel, he wrote that the Church needs voices like Eugene England and Hugh Nibley to play prophet roles because that role
I think he’s right, hence my continually calling on myself and all of you, my fellow monsters, to stay in the fight and try to be these kinds of voices–voices that, as Card continues, “are not invested with official authority, so that the only authority they have in their writing is its truthfulness, the resonance of their ideas in the hearts of their readers.”
I wish I could feel the optimism that you do, Jonah. I see Card’s words here as tortured apologetics rather than honest analysis. Card is talking about the doctrinal upheavals occasioned by the (sometimes ill-considered) gospel speculations of one church leader or another. (And such upheavals have usually been so tepid don’t even merit the term “upheaval.”) Why shouldn’t church leadership be clear on general, godly principles that can be applied to social issues? I think the real explanation is much less innocuous than Card’s.
I agree that Church leaders can and should be able to do this better, but I don’t see Card’s reminder as prescriptive as much as descriptive–and because it’s description, I don’t see it as apologetics. If it were more than description, I’d go to mournful commentary before I’d think to call it apologetics. Who/what is he defending? Who/what was I defending? For both he and I, at least on this issue, we are interested in encouraging non-official voices to do a lot of things that are important but which, given the overall state of church members and their overzealousness toward G.A. statements and lack of skill in being/thinking subtly, etc., can’t be done easily by our leaders. Both of us are calling for prophetic voices to assist–hoping guys like you would be among them. At least that’s all my intent was in sharing his statement and making my comment.
Yeah, I’m with Nahum on this one. If we’re to believe Card’s explanation, then we would have to find out why the Church is able to speak out on moral issues like gay marriage and abortion. Where’s the fear there of “every word…seized upon?”
I find it hard to believe that it’s this hard and this complicated, and we have prime examples of the church’s willingness to speak out on other issues that could just as easily fall into Card’s categories. As I’ve frequently said, this is the “Church of Jesus Christ,” not the “Corporation of Jesus Christ.” Yet this paranoia and this choice of making every decision, not based on what the right thing to do is, but based on how it will come back to haunt us, is the mark of a public relations-obsessed corporate culture, not a pastoring church willing to speak up for moral right and the most vulnerable in society. Can you imagine Jesus saying, “I don’t really have an opinion on that. If I speak up, my words will be twisted and cause upheaval.” The guy seemed pretty at peace with upheaval. And finally, if we’re to believe the church’s teachings that we’re in the last days, why the fear? When will it be time to go all in?
As for staying and being an assisting prophetic voice…I can’t pretend that I don’t have beliefs (beyond moral issues) that don’t square at all with Mormon teachings. I would have to do such absurd mental gymnastics I’d make a circus contortionist look like an amateur. I can’t in good conscience sit in a temple recommend interview and say I think Joseph Smith is a prophet and that Jesus is the Christ. And if I’m not able to do those things then I think I lose most of my credibility to be a prophetic voice.
Also, we all weigh consequences of our actions and assess the value of our choices. While I don’t fault (and rather quite admire) those who choose to stay in spite of concerns similar to mine, for me personally, I feel much more at peace and my conscience at ease by not participating and not being counted among those saints. My honest evaluation, after years of doubt and questioning and struggling, was the difficult conclusion that I do not belong.
I’d add (cause my last comment wasn’t long enough) that my assessment of LDS leadership is that these are men who are products of their environment and culture. They strike me as politically conservative people who consciously or unconsciously infuse their religious preaching with their conservative political worldview. Hence their ease in speaking out on abortion and gay marriage, yet their silence on war, torture, etc. I think this combines with their hesitancy to tread on conservative LDS political views and their fear of negative publicity.
I think historical precedent backs me up. The church and its leaders have a long history of speaking out on popular moral issues of the day, insisting God and the gospel are the reason behind their teachings, only to have the issue fall by the wayside when time and progress outdate the teaching.
Amos, respect your skepticism and decisions but have to point out that your comments about the brethren being products of their environment and corporation of Jesus Christ and inconsistencies in what they will speak out on and what they won’t, especially in the realm of what’s “moral” or not sounds A LOT like Nibley and England–and thereby in agreement with Card’s larger point.
Sometime we need to have an online discussion about the temple recommend stuff and this feeling that some of you Monsters have about needing to be able to say “I believe” to all the questions there, plus a bunch of other things taught in Mormonism present and past. I don’t think belonging and participating in a community happily is nearly as much about belief as it is relationships and binding together to be a positive force. I see you and many of our group as prophets who just no longer like or have patience with their community (think the worse of it and go to the extreme when touching on the negative stuff). And I think it’s largely a matter of choice–YOUR choice–that you do that rather than being driven to that place and stance by THEM.
Help me out here, Jonah. It sounds an awful lot like you’re saying “Gee, I like the people, I like this group, I deserve to be in it, so it’s okay to say I think Joseph Smith is a prophet even though I don’t.”
I mean, at what point am I so different than those in the group that I feel uncomfortable being there. And at what point am I being dishonest by going by all my own standards and expectations for the group instead of theirs. Mormonism has certain obvious meanings for questions like, “Do you believe Joseph Smith is a prophet?” I would feel dishonest saying “yes,” even though I could probably twist and turn myself into a pretzel to somehow make it work. I have no interest in muddying the waters to justify continued participation in a place where, frankly, if they knew precisely what I believed and how I felt, I wouldn’t be welcome.
Your last line seems pretty obvious to me. I mean, everything in life is a choice, no? But we all make choices based on a lot of various factors, some choices make better sense than others.
Is it really unreasonable for a person to choose to leave Mormonism because they feel like they don’t fit in? Is it unreasonable for a person to choose a life of disbelief because it makes the most sense to them? Is disbelief a valid, honorable choice? I would argue it absolutely is, so why try and continually push people towards something they have no interest in and don’t feel like is for them?
It is absolutely a valid choice to leave, though I keep after you because I haven’t yet come to see your reasoning as compelling. Neither do I have any intent to “push” you in any particular direction regarding the church but see my role in this and many discussions we have to simply challenge you when I think your reasoning is off or incomplete or based on assumptions that don’t track with my experience. I like it when you do that for me, so I keep bringing the heat to you.
To me, it seems from statements that you and many others in the group make suggest that you are close to being done with wrestling with Mormonism, Joseph Smith, scripture, spirit, the transcendent, etc. I don’t like that. For one thing, that’s what our group was formed around, but hardly any of you are biting any more on what seem to me to be hefty questions, so I simply try to keep dragging you back to them. And for a second thing, I think it’s important for our growth as people to be continually challenged. (To me, growth and enlargement of vision and refinement of character are what life is about. And I know that such “purposes” have very Mormon overtones. It isn’t solely Mormonism that teaches this, though, and is actually quite widespread—and especially so among people and thought and religious traditions I admire.) Given that sense of life’s purpose, I think it is very important to be part of a real and diverse community, something like what Gene England talked about in reference to marriage and the church—that they are “schools of love” that force us to interact with and wrestle and see important (and true) things about ourselves that we would rather not see. We all complain about the Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity “ditto heads” or “clones” or whatever we call them who don’t think for themselves because they only listen to talk radio and read books that support the one side and mischaracterize other views. Well, the same thing happens to progressives. Without “real” engagement with people who disagree with us, we are in danger of becoming versions of them ourselves.
Your opening line seems to imply that you don’t think I think Joseph Smith is a prophet. As someone who is calling you guys to be prophets for your own people—which to me means bringing good thinking and good sense into Mormon conversations—heck yeah I think he’s a prophet. And never do I feel compelled to have to twist myself in a pretzel over that question as I participate in the Church. I couldn’t care less what way others define him unless they are trying to use their definitions as a hammer (which is rarely, and in the last few years I have found ways to take on even these people in these cases, usually to good effect). From my own study, I find him to be an amazing figure who—as a person and for the scripture he was involved in bringing forth—I continue to feel is worth wrestling with. So if your feelings of “not fitting in” over definitional disagreements about Joseph and other things are what are keeping you away, I reiterate that that is your choice and that your reasoning about him is not compelling to me.
I like this – I feel like we’re getting into some interesting territory here.
Let me be very clear that I only refer to myself as someone who could not feel honest saying he thinks Joseph Smith is a prophet. I don’t project those feelings onto you or anyone else. And I guess for me personally, this is the core issue.
I feel like I have respect for your choices regarding Mormonism. I would never, ever, tell an intelligent person like yourself who’s done their time, “Hey, the LDS Church is crap. Get out!” I would never, ever proselytize anyone to leave. I’m no Christopher Hitchens, “Religion poisons everything,” character. I recognize that the complexity is much deeper than that. Sure, I’ll push hard and be very critical of those who I don’t think have done the work, yet have no problem passing judgment on others. I’m not shy about saying I think most Mormons don’t know much about religion, including their own. But that’s an American characteristic, not unique to Mormonism. (My experience is the Americans who say they love their country the most seem to know the least about it.)
So to be frank, it feels like you won’t reciprocate and give me the same trust I’ve imparted to you vis a vis your choices about religious faith and belief. You see my choice as “unreasonable,” to use your words above, and therefore in need of challenging. While I agree with you that we do need to be challenged in our thinking and reasoning, I think it has to be done on an equal playing field, and again, to be frank, I don’t think it is. Over the last few years, I’ve watched you show unfailing patience and tolerance for the most simple-minded (I would argue even silly) religious beliefs, all under the name of hoping for progress or something better from the person or group expressing those beliefs. Yet the most intelligent atheists or faith-critics seem to earn nothing but withering criticism from you, going well beyond contempt and approaching utter loathing. You strike me as visceral about it. Since I tend to be more in line with those critics, it’s hard not to take it personally.
Which is why I keep pushing on the same question: Is it possible for an intelligent person (which, forgive my modesty, I think I am) to be aware of issues, to have “done their time” in the faith, and to choose a life of disbelief? You seem to refuse to acknowledge that this is indeed possible, which I would take issue with. And is a life of faith so intensely important, that I must spend the rest of my days on earth pursuing…something? Must I also be an expert in Catholicism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, etc., before reaching the conclusions I have? And that conclusion is not that “There is no god and nothing after this life.” It’s a conclusion that says, “There may well be more after this is all said and done, but it is folly to try and pursue what that might be while I’m still here. Instead, I’ll live my life the way I feel brings me the most happiness.” Finding peace seems a reasonable choice to me, though perhaps it is at odds with your statement that growth and refinement of character is what life is about. But I see no way to be at peace by living the life you seem to expect of me and my fellow travelers.
You know my path as well as anyone; I’m not a lazy guy who just decided he wanted to drink and have fun. I’m as familiar with Mormonism as most people could be. And I recognize that those who have done the hard work and taken their time to truly understand the history and the faith over years of wrestling, have ended up on both sides of the faith fence. Some of us have decided that “there’s no there there” when it comes to Joseph Smith. I find him to be a brilliant, compelling character, but one utterly devoid of access to anything larger in the universe. This is not an uniformed opinion. It is not a knee-jerk reaction. It is the opinion of one who arguably is more familiar with the history than you are, though less familiar with the theology and scripture. And as I said, I recognize that there are those more familiar than me, and some have chosen to leave, and some have chosen to stay. I see neither as unreasonable and I would never think to tell Richard Bushman he’s wrong anymore than I would think to tell Richard van Wagoner that he’s wrong.
Finally, I’m always happy to entertain meaty questions and I think we spent some time going down an interesting road as we tried to whittle away futile issues (solipsism, for example) to get to some core ideas. But through all of our conversations, I have yet to have any kind of “aha” moment or compelling reason to feel differently. Is it really that impossible to believe that I’ve heard your arguments, understood them as best I can, evaluated them against my own feelings, and made a judgment call? When you say something “doesn’t track with [your] experience,” that kind of thinking troubles me a bit. It only seems natural that something wouldn’t track with your experience. To use a simple example, if one person goes to the LDS temple and feels something very powerful, and another person goes and feels nothing, is it really unreasonable for that second person to make a judgment based on their own experience? Why would they go off of the other person’s or put more trust in that than their own?
I’ve come to trust my own judgment more than anyone else’s on this question. It’s empowering, liberating, and peaceful. Does it limit my experience? Probably. Am I perhaps “missing out” by not investing myself in what others have been through? Probably. But I’m absolutely okay with that and would rather not rely on the spirituality of others in a fruitless quest to make sense of it all.
Probably best to break my responses up into several posts, otherwise all of this will be way too long.
We have to deal immediately with the difference between not finding someone’s reasons “compelling” and saying a person or person’s position are “unreasonable.” I said the former but definitely not the latter. For me, as we’re in a persuasion contest, when I say I don’t find your reasons compelling, I’m referring to not finding them powerful enough to move me from my basic stance. I’m not saying that I don’t see your arguments as “reasonable” in the sense of seeing your propositions adding up to a conclusion and finding you have violated the rules of logic in getting to that conclusion. Given the premises you state for having made the decisions you have, I don’t find your conclusion unreasonable in that way. I continue to challenge your premises as incomplete or far from being definitive analyses, but that’s a far cry from saying you or they are unreasonable. In saying this about their being incomplete and not definitive, my intent is not to offend you but only signal that I hope we can have further discussions.
You also add that you think I feel compelled to challenge you about your disbelief and seem upset by this because you don’t feel compelled to challenge me about my choosing to take a believer’s stance. I guess it’s fair to say I feel compelled to challenge you, but whatever compulsion I feel is in the context of trying to get at truth not trying to save your soul or anything like that. I enjoy our battles—pitting my ideas against yours—and find our exchanges very helpful as I try to focus and sharpen and better nuance my views. Of course I want you to come my direction a bit—don’t we all want others to see things more the way we do?—but my compulsions (to whatever degree I have them) are, alas, quite selfish. They are much less about you and any worries I have about your believing/disbelieving as you do and much, much more about my continual quest to try to understand everything as fully as possible.
Further, you mention that you seem to think that I “expect” something of you. I’m not sure where that feeling would originate. How you choose to live, believe, or not believe are of interest to me in the context of my naturally wanting you as a friend to be as happy as possible, but I don’t judge you as lacking in moral courage or some other commendable character trait should you never come my direction. I have added up the universe to be about soul-making and you haven’t, hence we’re both living out our truths as we see them. I have nothing to condemn in that.
Do I have visceral reactions to atheism? I don’t think so. Do I offer critiques of and think the recent main public atheists who have written books have been given too much celebratory credit for their analyses about religion? Absolutely. Is it contempt? I hope my feelings aren’t that, but you do have me pegged right in how I offer less slack to people who I think should know better or who are deliberately ignoring facts and twisting conclusions than to those who simply haven’t taken the time or have the capacity to really examine beliefs and assumptions.
To me, the “new athiests” books are classic examples of taking extreme cases and pretending they are normative and that they speak to the core of what religion is and why it should be abolished in favor of a secular utopia. They make some good points about the harm extreme or unthinking religious believing or acting can create, but nothing they write tracks with my own sense of what it means to be “religiuos,” so I don’t find their conclusions about what should be done compelling. For me, they are also guilty of failing to apply the same lenses to all the harm has been done by those who have tried in the past (and continue in some places in the present) to force secular positions on peoples and nations in just the same way as they claim religions have. The world’s bloodiest wars, by far, have been non-religious in nature. In addition, the tone of their books belies that they are doing something other than careful scholarship and analysis, yet they pretend that they are.
I’m sorry you have been taking personally my critiques of them. I wish you wouldn’t. I see you as someone who thinks for himself rather than simply buying fully into their analyses. I have no trouble separating you from these religious critics and what I find ridiculous about their stuff, and, as you experience in our chats here and in person, I am perfectly happy to call you out whenever I think statements you make are extreme and don’t think I ever link you explicitly to them. If I have, I’m very sorry and hope you will always call me out on it.
Now onto what you say is your perpetual question to me: “Is it possible for an intelligent person (which, forgive my modesty, I think I am) to be aware of issues, to have ‘done their time’ in the faith, and to choose a life of disbelief?”
It would be easy for me to say “of course it is,” but since I think it’s important to make a point, I will give the initial response of “no.” My quibble is with the phrase “life of disbelief.” To me it is impossible for anyone to live a “life of disbelief” because I believe every choice (even if it is just a choice revealed through an action rather than based on explicitly thought-out premises) anyone ever makes is an affirmation that they think what they are thinking/doing is better than other options. You claim to be living a life of disbelief, but I say you are living a life of belief–just a life based on different beliefs than what I hold. (You reveal some of your positive beliefs in this statement: “There may well be more after this is all said and done, but it is folly to try and pursue what that might be while I’m still here. Instead, I’ll live my life the way I feel brings me the most happiness.” I’d love to dig sometime into your reasons for affirming the folly of trying to pursue life after death questions while still alive, but for now I just wanted to use this statement as an illustration that I think you are living a life of belief in something–even if that something is that what others are attempting is folly.)
If you are looking for me to affirm that I think it’s possible for someone like you to live a life of “disbelief in Mormonism,” of course I’d answer yes. And to whatever degree people live their lives in sync with their sense of what is the highest good, I believe they can and will be happy. I must take you at your word that you are much happier out of the Mormon fold than within it, and I’m glad you are finding peace in your journey.
Now if my theory about happiness being the result of a person living in tune with his or her best sense of what’s truly important has any appeal to you, I would be excited to keep our discussion going about how we each order the universe’s “goods” such that we each can claim to be happier on the paths we are on rather than the one we see the other person on. That kind of discussion is truly what I would deem as fitting my earlier call for us to once more dig into “hefty questions.”