Or you could just read 4 Nephi. Both books document the increasing class divisions of a once happy and prosperous people. However, Murray brings in a lot of sociological findings that have a certain scientific appeal.

The overall theme of the book is the collapse of traditional American core virtues since the time of the Kennedy assassination in 1963, and the simultaneous emergence of genuine class stratification in white America. Murray chooses white America in order to avoid confounding his analysis with racial or ethnic issues. However, towards the end of the book, Murray informs us that when the discussion is broadened to include all races and ethnicities, very little changes. The most serious social problems in present-day American are problems of class, not of race or ethnicity.

There are three main themes to the book. The first is the rise of a New Upper Class that differs significantly from the old elite. Murray talks about a narrow elite of perhaps less than 10,000 people who really shape the country. Then there is a broader elite of perhaps 100,000 people who are locally influential. These are part of a new upper class that Murray argues has emerged as a result of the rising value of cognitive skills. F. Scott Fitzgerald once fatuously wrote that “the rich are not like the rest of us”; Hemingway famously snarked back “Yes, they have more money.” In 1960 Hemingway was right; the wealthiest Americans had little in common with each other, other than money, which they did not have in common with the rest of Americans. The very richest might eat off fine china placed before them by servants, but the actual food was the same roast beef and potatoes that most Americans ate for Sunday dinner. It’s a handy metaphor for America in 1960.

But Fitzgerald seems to have had the last word. Whereas even the rich in 1960 mostly did not have college degrees, almost all the rich of 2010 do. Gates and Jobs are rare exceptions, and they are exceptions that tend to support the general rule: Wealth comes from having valuable cognitive skills, and top cognitive skills are now tightly correlated with holding a bachelor’s degree or better from an elite school. Furthermore, the new upper class is increasingly self-perpetuating, since the rise of college education has provided greatly increased opportunities for the cognitive elite to meet each other at college during the prime years for selecting marriage partners. Homogamy among the cognitive elite has turned it into a genuine social class.

This elite is also increasingly isolated from the rest of America. Murray offers a fascinating test, “How Thick Is Your Bubble?”, with provocative questions like “Do you have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian?”; “Have you ever held a job where something hurt at the end of the day?”, or “Have you ever lived for more than a year in a neighborhood where most of those within a mile of you did not have college degrees?” I did not score well. I would have scored even worse if I did not have some background in Church service.

Murray is a conservative-leaning libertarian who attends Quaker services with his wife (I had to fish up the latter fact from Wikipedia) so it should perhaps be no surprise that he is opposed to income redistribution as a “solution” to the “problem” of the New Upper Class. He points out that the cognitive elite have brought considerable economic prosperity to the country, though not so much to the white underclass (on which more in a minute), and that they cannot and should not be eliminated. His program is reform, not revolution, and his call is for the New Upper Class to recognize their bubble and get out of it in order to breathe new life into the American project.

The second theme of the book is the increasing separation between Belmont and Fishtown. Both are real places but they also become metaphors for the New Upper Class and a growing white underclass. This is where Murray really starts throwing sociological data at you, and if (like some of Murray’s academic reviewers) you refuse to be alarmed, it’s because you’re sticking your fingers in your ears while singing the Hymn of the Soviet Union at the top of your lungs. It turns out — this surprised me, and may surprise you — that the New Upper Class have mostly stayed married, religious, and involved in their communities. Very few of their children are born out of wedlock and very few are involved in criminal conduct. Nevertheless, “few” is not “none” and while the absolute numbers remain small, the relative numbers between 1960 and 2008 give cause for concern.

But it is the white underclass that gives real alarm. Fishtown was remarkably similar to Belmont in 1960; both had very high marriage rates, very low illegitimacy rates, moderately high rates of church and civic activity, and low crime rates. The divergence since 1963 is remarkable. We are approaching the point where the majority of children in Fishtown are being born out of wedlock, crime rates are alarming, and religiosity has plummeted.

Murray’s analysis is going to be uncomfortable for a lot of folks hoping for a straightforward exposition on the evils of economic inequality. I suspect a lot of liberals are going to hurl the book across their room with great force when they get to the section on industriousness. Murray make a strong historical case that America has been exceptional in that, while Europeans work to live, Americans live to work. Murray defines industriousness by such measures as disability rates and number of hours worked per week, and he restricts his analysis to males, since he refuses to accept that 1960s housewives were not gainfully employed. Industriousness remains high in Belmont, but it has plummeted in Fishtown. In an era during which medical care and industrial hygiene have both improved significantly, diasbility rates in Fishtown have paradoxically skyrocketed. So have the numbers of males who have taken themselves out of the work force; the increase in idle males seems unaffected by the state of the economy or the availability of gainful employment.

Murray’s third theme is that this is going to end in disaster for the American enterprise. Murray acknowledges that America as a nation may remain powerful and relatively rich, but what makes America exceptional is in very serious danger. He worries most that our elite have become a “hollow elite”; while they still practice the old virtues and while they still get great satisfaction in life from the only four sources that matter — marriage, vocation, community, and religion — they have succumbed to a weird form of backwards hypocrisy in which they are unwilling to preach what they practice. Murray snarks that perhaps they just want to keep the good stuff to themselves; but after laughing over his little joke, he puts on his straight face and says that more likely it’s a lack of cultural confidence, which, if it is so, spells the end for American exceptionalism.

Murray does not end on that pessimistic note; he is not John Derbyshire. Murray argues that four factors may yet convince the new upper class to come out of its bubble and turn back to the old American virtues. First, Europe is about to collapse, and its demise may be a powerful negative example to the broad American elite. Second, Murray argues that the intellectual foundations of the welfare state may be about to implode; advances in evolutionary psychology and neurology may provide powerful evidence for the traditional family and for free will at some deep neurological level. Third, he believes it will be increasingly obvious that there is a better alternative to the European-style social state, where life is nothing but the interval between being born and dying, to be made as pleasantly leisurely as possible. Finally, Murray argues for the resilience of the old American ideals. He is optimistic about the rise of what he calls ‘enthusiastic religion.’ He mentions evangelical Christians, but Mormons seem to fit his description quite well also.

I am not as optimistic as Murray. I’ve long thought that we’re already in free fall, and the pavement is coming up fast. However, I found his discussion of the four areas from which human beings derive real satisfaction highly instructive. I have not had success at marriage, my career stagnated after the second Death Star fiasco, and my community involvement has not been a positive (I’ve mostly destroyed them) but there is still the solace of religion. I’ve resolved to consecrate myself to the Gospel cause more fully from now on, which, if nothing else, justifies the time I spent reading this book.

I’ve installed a mobile theme to this blog to make it easier to read LDSMediaTalk.com on a mobile phone.

Let me know how it works for you.

As with the previous posts in this series, this will be focused less on dissecting Romney than on discussing what it means to be a Mormon priesthood leader, and how this might bear on the kind of man Romney is and President he will be. I’ll bring in Mormon theology only to the extend necessary to illuminate some of the roots of Mormon culture. And, as in the previous posts, I’m dropping the Vader persona, though without revealing too much about myself, something my employer frowns upon.

One of the peculiarities of Mormonism is the heavy use of lay clergy. Almost every active member of your local Mormon congregation has a church calling, and none gets paid to carry it out. Even the routine cleaning and vacuuming of the chapel are done by the members as a rotating assignment. Only when you get above the local level do you start to see any paid professionals, and they’re mostly doing building maintenance or running the Church’s computer systems. And they’re typically assisted by an army of volunteer Church service missionaries.

This lay clergy seems to be something of a bragging point among Church members, and why not? It is impressive, and its contribution to the strength of the Church is priceless. I do understand that the great majority of non-Mormon churches rely on a fair amount of volunteerism as well, and that the majority of non-Mormon ministers are not exactly getting rich off their callings. My non-Mormon Christian friends seem as appalled by rich televangelists as I am. But the average Mormon doesn’t seem to view the reliance on lay clergy as merely one practical approach to Christian ministry; he seems to regard a paid clergy as a positive moral evil.

There are doctrinal roots to this attitude. Joseph Smith was told by the Angel Moroni that he must not seek the Gold Plates with any thought of getting rich. The Book of Mormon condemns priestcraft: “Priestcrafts are that men preach and set themselves up for a light unto the world, that they may get gain and praise of the world; but they seek not the Welfare of Zion…. But the laborer in Zion shall labor for Zion; for if they labor for money they shall perish.”  Mormonism also takes seriously the New Testament doctrine of a priesthood of all believers, though with the twist that the believing brother is actually ordained to an office in the priesthood.

Almost all faithful Mormon men are ordained elders shortly after they turn 18, and they then take their place in the elders’ quorum of their ward. Officially, the elders’ quorum exists to train the elders in their duties and to coordinate their home teaching visits. Unofficially, in most wards in which I’ve lived, the elders’ quorum also serves as a complimentary moving service and dues-free sports club, with an occasional barbecue thrown in.  In other words, in addition to its formal ecclesiastical duties, the elders’ quorum fills a number of ordinary human social needs.

At some point in his life, a faithful Mormon man is likely to be ordained a high priest. This typically takes place so that he can fill certain callings requiring the High Priesthood, such as serving in a bishopric, a stake presidency, or on a stake high council. A bishopric leads a ward (local congregation) and consists of a bishop and two counselors. The bishop must be a high priest, and his counselors are almost always ordained high priests as well. A stake presidency supervises several wards and consists of a stake president and two counselors, who must all be high priests. They are assisted by a high council of twelve high priests. The name “stake” is shorthand for “stake of Zion”, from a metaphor of the Church as a big tent with stakes holding down its corners.

Thus, a typical Mormon ward has an elders’ quorum and a high priests’ group, with the elders’ quorum typically consisting of the unmarried and younger married men from the ward and the high priests’ group consisting of the older married men from the ward. Aside from its ecclesiastical purposes, this division serves some important social purposes: The elders’ quorum tends to specialize in the needs of young fathers, while the high priests’ group provides a good place for older men to doze during the final hour of church, uninterrupted by crying babies. –Did I mention that Mormons love to laugh at themselves?

I’m going to have to explain the humor. Sunday services for Mormons last a full three hours. When I was a kid, these were broken up into three separate meetings each Sunday. That made for a lot of travel, especially in wards covering a large geographical area, and the Church switched to a solid block of meetings when I was a teenager. Typically the sacrament service comes first, followed by Sunday School, followed by priesthood meeting (for men) and Relief Society (for women.) Children have their own Primary meeting the last two hours, but sacrament meeting is an occasion for entire families to sit together. The breaks between the three meetings are occasions for much coming and going in the hallways, particularly on the part of the Primary children, much like X.J. Kennedy’s picture of Heaven: “Gangs of the slaughtered innocents keep huffing/The nimbus off the Venerable Bede…”

Hence, during the final hour of the meeting block, with the younger children safely ensconced in their Primary classrooms, the wives and daughters off to Relief Society, and the elders meeting in their own quorum, the high priests’ group meeting is a time for the older men to sit and pontificate back and forth on whatever the lesson topic is that day. If they can stay awake. I am reminded of the story of the high priest who suffered a heart attack in his group meeting. When the paramedics arrived, they resuscitated three high priests before they got to the right one …

Okay, enough old guy jokes. If you did not already guess, I was ordained a high priest many years ago.

A less obvious but very important purpose of the division of the younger men into the elders’ quorum and the older men into the high priests’ group is the opportunity for the elders to gain experience in Church leadership. The elders’ quorum has its own presidency, consisting of the president, two counselors, and a secretary. The elders’ quorum president is generally a promising future leader, often a young man who has returned from a mission, has married, and is now raising a family (though none of these are strict requirements.) The same is likely true of his counselors and secretary. They meet regularly with other ward leaders, with visiting Church authorities, and with their quorum members. They practice leadership skills that will be put to use later in other positions of leadership. An awful lot of bishops got their first training in adult Church leadership as elders’ quorum presidents.

Church leaders aren’t chosen by those they lead. They are chosen by authorities higher up the hierarchy. Thus, when a new elders’ quorum president is needed, a candidate is typically nominated by his bishop. The nomination is considered by the stake presidency, who present the name of the candidate to the high council for further discussion. All of these leaders are expected to prayerfully seek the guidance and confirmation of God in this process. The chosen candidate is then sustained by his quorum: The stake president tells the quorum that they believe the Lord has called Brother Smith to serve as the elders’ quorum president, and the quorum members are asked to raise their hand to show that they sustain the call. The quorum is also given the opportunity to dissent from the call, but this is so rare an occurrence that I haven’t seen it happen in decades. It’s a matter of faith in inspired leadership: as the joke goes, Brother Smith must have been called by God, because no one else would ever have thought of him … Once sustained, the candidate is set apart as the elders’ quorum president by laying on of hands of the stake president.

An elders’ quorum president typically serves from a few months to several years. Sometimes he is released in order to be called to another important position. Very often he is released simply because his leaders feels it is someone else’s turn. The latter is rarely perceived as any reflection on the former president. It’s simply how things work in the Church.

I do not know exactly what callings Romney has held in the church. He may well have been called as an elders’ quorum president shortly after marrying Ann, and as a promising young leader, he may then have been called to the stake high council and ordained a high priest. As a high councilor, his most visible duty would be speaking at different wards around his stake as a representative of the the stake president. Less visible but more vital duties include extending certain callings from the stake president, setting apart some of those so called, and participating in stake disciplinary councils. The latter is perhaps the weightiest duty of a high councilor. Members who violate church standards in sufficiently serious ways (committing a serious crime, abusing family members, committing adultery, or repeatedly preaching against settled Church doctrine, for example) can be put on probation, disfellowshipped or excommunicated. Since the lesser penalties are usually administered by a bishop, a high council disciplinary meeting is usually to consider excommunication, the most serious form of discipline in the Church.

Whether or not Romney first served on a high council, he was called at the tender age of 30 as a counselor to a stake president. This is not the usual progression; a counselor in a stake president has usually served as a bishop first. But it’s not a strict requirement and Romney had doubtless already distinguished himself as a Church leader.

After serving in a stake presidency, Romney was called as a bishop. This is A Big Deal. A candidate for a bishopric is nominated by his stake president to the First Presidency of the Church. If they approve the candidate, the stake president is authorized to ordain the new bishop after he is presented to his ward for a sustaining vote. In my father’s day, a new bishop had to travel to Salt Lake City to be ordained by the First Presidency themselves, but that’s no longer practical, and I think Romney was called after that change was made. The new bishop soon finds himself in a world of hurt schedule-wise; his list of duties is lengthy and many cannot be delegated to his counselors. Only the bishop himself is authorized to perform marriages, hear confessions of sins, interview members to receive their temple endowments, interview young men to be ordained to or advanced in the Aaronic Priesthood, interview children of record for baptism (converts are interviewed by the local mission), authorize formal welfare assistance to members in need, etc., etc., ad weary etc. It’s easily a 20-hours-per-week job, for which the bishop receives no pay, on top of his regular day job. (Though, as they say, the retirement is out of this world.) Bishops are accordingly held in extraordinarily high regard and affection by most of their ward members; unfortunately, every bishop discovers there are a few disgruntled exceptions. You can’t please everyone, so you remind yourself that God is part of the audience.

By all accounts, Romney was as extraordinary a bishop as he was a missionary. However, bishops have to do hard things. There is the story, widely enough told that it is likely true, that Bishop Romney had to give some hard counsel to a woman considering an abortion. The Church shrinks from labeling elective abortion as flat-out murder, but forbids it as “like unto murder” and considers it grounds for the most severe Church discipline. There are exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother, but these are not automatic; the woman is expected to counsel with her bishop and receive confirmation by the Holy Spirit that the decision to abort is justified. In the case involving Bishop Romney, the mother apparently was inclined to end a dangerous pregnancy and Romney felt strongly that she should not do so. This is worth consideration by social conservatives who fear Romney is not sincere enough in opposing abortion.

Romney was apparently called as a stake president while still serving as a bishop. At the time, these calls were made by a visiting Apostle, who would interview likely candidates and make a selection, with the candidate being presented for a sustaining vote at a stake conference. When a bishop is called as a stake president, there is usually a slight delay before a replacement can be called to take over his bishopric, and for a short time the new stake president is holding down both callings. Just thinking about the burden involved makes my head hurt.

Stake presidents have considerable authority to lay down policy within their stakes, but they are still local leaders and they do not determine doctrine or deviate from the general policies of the Church. Romney was a stake president in an unusually liberal corner of the Church, and his members included an unusual number who considered a lot of settled doctrine and policy to be up for debate. Romney’s approach to these members suggests to me a man who was willing to listen to the other point of view, but who at his core was quite conservative.

In 1967, Richard Poll published an essay, What the Church Means to People Like Me, that introduced a metaphor that a fair number of my fellow Saints utterly despise but which seems to have resonated with many others. Poll divided the church into Iron Rod members, who looked to the Church to define a clear and well-defined path to salvation, and Liahona members, who saw the Church as a compass to help them find their own path to salvation. (The terms Iron Rod and Liahona are drawn from Book of Mormon imagery.) Perhaps unsurprisingly, the breakdown roughly corresponded to conservative and liberal members of the church, and my own reading of Pope’s essay is that Pope was a Liahona member who was ever so slightly contemptuous of his intellectual inferiors among the Iron Rod members. It’s an old story and it’s still with us today, although the gap seems to have widened and the preferred labels seem to have mutated to True Believing Mormon and New Order Mormon.

Romney seems to have been an Iron Rod Mormon who nonetheless tried, as stake president, to be as accommodating as possible of Liahona Mormons. These Liahona Mormons included a number of feminists who questioned the all-male priesthood leadership of the Church and the traditional roles of women as wives and mothers. Romney looked for creative ways to give these women more of a leadership role in his stake without departing from Church orthodoxy in the matter, which doesn’t seem to have really satisfied anyone.

I do not know enough about the specifics in Romney’s case to draw very many conclusions, but I do know something about orthodoxy and heterodoxy in the Church generally. I am quite confident that critics of the Church who characterize it as the “Morg Collective”, whose members give robotic obedience to their leaders, don’t know much about how the Church actually works. I am even more confident that critics of the Church who depict its women as Stepford wives have had very little actual contact with real live Mormon women. The truth is that Mormons love to talk about doctrine, love to speculate about doctrine, and love to argue about doctrine. Every Mormon ward I’ve lived in has had a member or two who furiously galloped through life on his gospel hobby horse, to the bemusement of his fellow Saints, some of whom probably hurt themselves struggling to keep a straight face. Get a group of randomly selected faithful Mormons together and ask them whether evolution was part of the creative process, whether the Flood was a literal universal flood, whether the original Hill Cumorah was in upstate New York or in central America, or whether a murderer is forever barred from exaltation, and you’ll get about as many opinions as there are Mormons in the room.

In theory, a Jewish man is master of his home. Yeah, right. Tell that to his wife. Mormons are more like that than you would guess. If Mormon women do not occupy highly visible ward leadership callings, their callings are nonetheless vital in less visible ways. A ward Relief Society president is the closest female counterpart in the ward to the bishop, and she works closely with him in the administration of welfare relief: A bishop may have no clue what groceries a young family with an unemployed father needs, so it’s the Relief Society president who fills out the bishop’s storehouse order form. A fair number of bishops, including my current bishop, invite their Relief Society president to attend the regular priesthood executive committee meeting, where she sits as the equal of the elders’ quorum president, high priests group leader, and other ward leaders. And any Mormon can tell you that the Relief Society president is wired into an intelligence network that would put Mossad to shame: If a ward member goes into the hospital, the Relief Society will have a sister at the family’s door with a hot casserole and freshly baked bread before the hospital admissions have finished verifying insurance.

Some folks find this smothering. They shouldn’t.

Notwithstanding their fondness for theological debates, there are some things almost all faithful Mormons are agreed on. All look to Christ as Son of God and Redeemer. All believe God has answered their prayers and that the Holy Spirit has touched their lives. All believe that they have seen the hand of God moving in the Church. If you can get close enough to a Mormon to get him to really open up, almost any Mormon will have a story or two about a Church leader who really screwed up. But those stories are not tossed lightly about at the elders’ quorum barbeque, because faithful Mormons fear to lift up their heels against the Lord’s anointed. Not because they fear the wrath of their leaders or the vengeance of the mythical Morg Collective, but because they really believe they will have to answer to that God whose hand moves those leaders.

So your average Mormon is a perplexing mixture of heterodoxy and orthodoxy, in which respect he is probably not so different from other Christians or Jews. The difference is that the average Mormon believes that, ultimately, the Church is led by a group of living prophets who anchor the Church to Christ Himself. Destroy that belief, and at some fundamental level the man ceases to be one of the Saints. But the Lord warned Joseph Smith that we would not always be able to discern the hypocrites, and that poses a bit of a problem for a Church leader. Are the dissenters Saints through whom the Lord is also working in His own manner? Or are they hypocrites in whom the core Mormonism has been extinguished, who wish to transform the Church into something that would be alienated from God?

I’m not sure how much this tells us about how a President Romney would approach his office. Romney would doubtless listen carefully to the opposition. I believe he also has a hard core of basic principles he will not compromise. Just how the balance between the two plays out in office will be interesting to watch. I suppose it should be obvious by now that I consider it a better gamble than the alternatives.

LDS Maps (maps.lds.org or go to LDS.org, click Tools, then Maps) has been updated with a variety of new features to make it easier to find stake members, meetinghouses, temples, and other Church facilities. Some of the new features include a number of map display options, better iPad and tablet support, unit boundary maps, the Locate Me feature, and improved print options. You can view and print driving directions and share map links through social media. .

Here are two great new features you should look at:

Ward/Stake Map

After you sign in with your LDS Account, click View Your Ward and you will  see a map of the members of your ward. The sidebar will show a list of member names. In addition to looking up where members live, you could use it for

• Emergency preparedness planning
• Dividing up the ward for distributing fliers
• Planning routes for collecting fast offerings
• Home and visiting teaching
• Missionary work
• Realignment of ward boundaries in the stake

Find Other Church Buildings

In the upper right, click the Layers icon to search for temples, visitors’ centers, historical places, tabernacles, institutes, seminaries, bishops’ storehouses, canneries, home storage centers, Deseret Industries, Employment Resource Centers, and LDS Family Services offices.

For introductory information about LDS Maps, see the LDS Maps Getting Started guide. In the left pane, click Maps 101 to see an overlay that shows what the various icons means. For more detailed information, see the LDS Maps release notes.

If you live close to Utah, you may be interested in the following message from the Church’s media department:

Currently casting background actors for additional New Testament stories to be filmed during July & August of 2012. Check out our Facebook page for details – facebook.com/LDSCasting

Need:

• Disciples, Townsmen: 20+ years old, Middle Eastern or Semitic looking men, beards (longer is better), average or slender build
• Roman soldiers: 20-50 years old, muscular build, at least 6′ tall, weather-worn, shorter cropped beard, some facial hair is a must
• African townspeople (16+ years old, average to slender build)
• Women: Middle Eastern or Semitic looking, average or slender build, no permanent makeup please
• Infirm, Lepers: Middle Eastern or Semitic looking, slender to frail, faces and bodies with lots of character (missing teeth, weathered, wrinkled, missing limbs, etc.

Men, are you willing and able to grow a beard? Do you look like you could fit in the New Testament times? Are you interested in participating in the additional Church New Testament scenes that will be filmed this summer? Do you know others who have a Middle Eastern, Semitic or Mediterranean look and would also like to participate? If you are interested, please apply and begin growing your beards now. As your beard grows longer, please update your online photos.

For all interested please go to casting.lds.org and fill out your profile to be entered into our talent database. Make sure you click on the New Testament project and indicate you are interested in participating in this production.

Thank you!

I do not know Mitt Romney. The most that I can claim is that a close friend knew Romney at first hand many years back. My friend thinks very highly of Romney and plans to vote for him, though he wishes Romney was a bit more conservative politically, but that’s been the extent of our discussion. So what follows is mostly not an attempt to dissect the specifics of Romney; rather, it is a more general discussion of what it means to be a Mormon man, written from a largely cultural Mormon perspective, and how this might bear on the kind of man Romney is and President he will be. I’ll bring in Mormon theology only to the extend necessary to illuminate some of the roots of Mormon culture.

I’m also going to have to drop the Vader persona for this series of posts. By their nature, these posts are going to include a lot of material distilled from my own experience as a lifelong Mormon, and the topic is too serious to risk any forced Vader humor. (Well, except that one.) I’m going to remain coy about my own precise identity; my employer insists on it.

Roughly half the membership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was born in the Church. Both Romney and I are part of this group, and we both have several generations of Mormon ancestry, going back to the pioneers that crossed the Great Plains from Nauvoo to the Salt Lake Valley from 1847 on. Both of us have ancestors who practiced polygamy during the latter half of the 19th century. My last polygamist ancestor was a great-great-grandfather, while Romney is one generation closer to his polygamist forebears.

The Mormon settlements in the Old West developed a distinctive character that reflected both the new Mormon theology and the established culture of the immigrant who were attracted to that theology. Most of these immigrants came from New England, the British Isles, and Scandinavia, with just a leavening of southern Americans and other northern Europeans. These immigrants were relatively literate and well steeped in both the Old and New Testament, though, unsurprisingly, they tended to be unusually dissatisfied with the dominant Christian denominations in their communities. Often they felt that what they saw and were taught in their original churches was at odds with what they read in the Bible, and the flood of new revelation through Joseph Smith, the Mormon founding prophet, was to them a floodlight illuminating the meaning of their traditional scriptures.

The Mormonism they converted to, though thoroughly unorthodox, was nonetheless a thoroughly Christ-centered religion, which viewed Jesus of Nazareth as God the Son, quite literally the spiritual and physical Son of God the Father, and as the Redeemer of all mankind. It was a religion that heavily emphasized spiritual gifts, including revelation, prophecy, healing, and the gift of tongues. The Church’s claim to continuing revelation, beginning with the Book of Mormon, was a rejection of the completeness of the existing scriptural canon and suggested the possibility that the canon was not even infallible, yet the early Saints took the Bible very seriously. It would be fair to say that the Bible long remained at the heart of the Mormon scriptural canon, undisplaced by the Book of Mormon, which was treated largely as a second witness to and commentary on the Bible. This may surprise some readers, but it is consonant with my own experience. I grew up on Bible stories and did not really begin to be introduced to Book of Mormon stories until well after my baptism at age 8. The modern emphasis on the Book of Mormon within the Church began within my lifetime.

The first pioneers entered into the Nauvoo Covenant, a sacred pledge to support each other in the journey west. Part of the concrete realization of this covenant was the Perpetual Emigration Fund, a rotating fund that provided loans to help the poorer Saints make the journey to Utah and get settled into their new homes. The fund was later seized by the U.S. Government during the polygamy prosecutions, which hindered further Mormon immigration, as was doubtless intended; however, the modern Perpetual Education Fund, which provides educational loans to Saints in Third World countries, was deliberately styled after the Perpetual Immigration Fund. Thus the pioneers had a strong sense of community.

The isolation of the Mormon communities and the prior history of persecution within the United States, combined with the searing experiences of the Utah War and the polygamy prosecutions, might be expected to have destroyed any loyalty of the Saints to the United States. Certainly the Congressmen who refused to seat B.H. Roberts and nearly denied Reed Smooth his Senate seat thought so. Yet this was not the case. Among Joseph Smith’s revelations were statements, taken as coming from the lips of Christ Himself, that the authors of the Constitution had been raised up by God for that very purpose, and that the Constitution was an expression of principles for establishing a just secular government in preparation for the divine government of Christ at His Second Coming. Even more central to Mormon theology is the concept of agency: Mormons resoundingly reject any Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, viewing the suffering of Christ as the price paid for men to be given genuine moral choice. Thus the philosophy of natural rights became, to the Saints, an article of religion. The Saints could not easily forget that they had been denied their rights by other Americans, but they came to view the American polity as a divinely inspired system that sometimes fell into the hands of evil men.

With the end of polygamy and the granting of statehood to Utah, the Saints worked to integrate themselves into the larger nation while preserving the distinctive character of their communities. By 1940 it was possible for Hollywood to produce Brigham Young, with its sympathetic portrayal of the Mormon pioneers (and, incidentally, a slightly eccentric portrayal of Joseph Smith by Vincent Price.) Among the fatalities at Pearl Harbor was Mervyn Bennion, captain of battleship West Virginia and an active Latter-day Saint. The Eisenhower administration included Ezra Taft Benson, a sitting Mormon Apostle, as Secretary of Agriculture.

The mid-20th Century also saw the gradual transformation of the Church from a community comfortable with the most liberal and progressive elements of American culture (Emmeline Wells, president of the Women’s Relief Society, was a friend of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony) to a community that increasingly identified itself with the more conservative elements of American culture. Utah voted for Lyndon Johnson in 1964; it has not given its electoral votes to a Democratic nominee for President since. I believe it would be fair to say that much of this shift was in the American ideological map rather than in the Church; what it meant to be a liberal underwent a sea change in 1960s, and conservatism as a knee-jerk reaction became conservatism as an articulated political philosophy at about the same time. Church members, disturbed by the spread of Communism, by the radicalism of the 1960s, and by the growing secularization of American culture, found that the new political conservatism of the Republican Party resonated with them. Early Church members had practiced a form of voluntary community socialism called the “United Order”; many saw Communism, with its explicit atheism and state coercion, as Satan’s counterfeit, and most of the Church membership became strongly anti-Communist and anti-Socialist. A Church membership that had been fairly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans became increasingly Republican.

George Romney, Mitt’s father, found a measure of political success as a liberal Republican in the 1960s. However, his campaign for President seems to have foundered largely on a single ill-advised remark: He described the military’s careful orchestration of his visit to Vietnam as a brainwashing. I would not be the first to suggest that this explains Mitt’s own circumspection. Mitt has approached his political career with a not-entirely-irrational fear of stepping on a political land mine and suffering the fate of his father.

Mitt the Mormon Elder

Another thing Mitt Romney and I share is an upbringing in a family having pioneer Mormon roots but living outside the traditional “Mormon Corridor.” My grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all lived in predominantly Mormon communities; I was raised in a community that was mostly not LDS. The same is true of Romney. For me, this meant having a foot in each of two worlds: the tight-knit Mormon congregation, and the wider non-Mormon community. Both my parents and I had good friends in both communities, but the bulk of our social activities revolved around the Mormon congregation. This was partly because ours was a small community and most people did a lot of socializing within their respective churches, for lack of other diversions.

Mitt’s congregation was tiny compared with my own. I grew up in a ward, which is a congregation of about 200-600 members led by a bishop. This bishop is a layman (in fact, at one point, my bishop was my own father) and his position is not permanent, though his tenure tended to be a bit longer back then. Nowadays a bishop serves for about five years, and it is quite uncommon for one to serve a second “term” any time thereafter. The other congregational leaders are also laymen. In fact, the only paid employee of my ward was the janitor. Mitt’s congregation in his earliest years was a branch consisting of a few members meeting in his father’s home; later the Church in his area grew to the point where a small ward could be organized. His father was the branch president and then (I believe) bishop of his ward. Later the elder Romney became a stake president, supervising several wards and branches, a position I’ll discuss more in a future post.

Boys in the Church are ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood sometime at or after age twelve. Their role in this “lesser priesthood” is rather like that of an altar boy in a more traditional Christian faith. The 12- and 13-year-olds serve as deacons, whose primary visible duty is distributing the bread and water of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. (Which is almost always spoken of among Mormons simply as “the sacrament”, since it is a weekly ritual in a Church that has almost no other weekly rituals or liturgy.) The 14- to 15-year-olds serve as Teachers (a formal priesthood title) who make the preparations for sacrament meetings. They also begin their formal teaching ministry, by joining in home teaching, a program of monthly visits to every family in the ward. The home teachers present a short religious message, see how the family is doing, and (generally) socialize a bit. Home teachers can sometimes be assigned to visit the same family for many years, and they often develop strong bonds of friendship with their assigned families. Indeed, it is not unheard of for a home teaching relationship to end after decades with the home teacher as an honorary pallbearer at the member’s funeral. As Adam Greenwood would say, it’s all part of the sweetness of Mormon life. Boys who participate in home teaching invariably are partnered with a mature man chosen to be a mentor to them, often their own father.

At age 16 to 17 the young man is ordained a priest. At this point, he is qualified to perform baptisms, administer the sacrament, and ordain other deacons, teachers, and priests. He is beginning to accept adult responsibilities and is working towards becoming a full-fledged adult member of the Mormon community. However, he is not yet qualified to confirm those who have been baptized or to give inspired blessings, duties that are reserved for full-fledged adult males who have been ordained elders. More about that in a moment.

Girls are not ordained to the priesthood, which is strongly identified with the ideals of fatherhood. (They have their own organizations, which are beyond the scope of this post.) Furthermore, the modern Church has enthusiastically adopted Scouting as the activities program for its young men. The entire young men’s program in the Church is a thus a program of intense male bonding that would put Robert Bly to shame.

It is a healthy form of male bonding, though. Young Saints of both sexes, who are generally baptized and confirmed at age eight, are taught the usual Christian virtues, plus abstinence from alcohol. tobacco, coffee, tea, illicit drugs, and any kind of sexual activity outside of marriage. In the case of the young men, the ban on sexual activity is accompanied by a considerable amount of placing the fair sex on a pedestal, with carefully chaperoned coeducational activities intended to teach basic courtship skills. The result is that an astonishing fraction of Mormon first marriages are marriages between two virgins.

One does not really expect an eight-year-old to fully understand his or her commitment to Christ. My own deeper conversion to Mormonism took place in my mid-teens. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that it was helped along by a certain amount of Mormon cultural kitsch, including the notorious Saturday’s Warrior. In any case, a real commitment took hold before I reached adulthood, was ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood, and was called on a mission.

Young men are ordained to the higher or Melchizedek Priesthood sometime after their 18th birthday. If the Aaronic Priesthood is a kind of apprenticeship, the Melchizeked Priesthood is “the real thing.” Like the Aaronic Priesthood, it has several offices, but the two ordinary offices are elder and high priest. It is to the office of elder these new adult men in the Mormon congregation are ordained. I cannot really fault members of traditional Christian denominations who snicker at our 19-year-old elders, but we are using the word in a perfectly respectable sense, denoting someone who has reached full adulthood in the Mormon community. Elders can confirm those who are baptized, can give inspired blessings, can ordain other elders, and can (in time) participate in the full range of temple ordinances.

Temples play an important role in the Church. They are the places where we perform vicarious baptisms for the dead, as has been much (and mostly poorly) discussed in the news lately. The Mormon belief is that the strict law of God requires every soul that would be saved to receive baptism; while the justice and boundless mercy of God requires that no soul be denied the opportunity to receive salvation. This is a bit of a problem in a world where the vast majority of human beings have died without ever hearing about Jesus Christ or baptism. The solution is to perform such baptisms vicariously for every departed human soul we can identify. It is clearly understood that the departed retain their moral agency, and each can decide for himself whether to accept vicarious baptism, a point that seems to be lost in much of the popular discussion. Our youth regularly participate in such baptisms, which are the only temple ordinance in which they can normally participate.

But there is another significance to the temple. It is here that we receive the endowment, which is a series of ordinances meant to prepare the soul to return to God. We don’t talk a lot about it; indeed, we specifically covenant with God that we will not describe the core elements of it. It is most sacred, and the temple likewise becomes a sacred space, as fully apart from the world as any place on Earth can be. The endowment is also a preparation for marriage, which when performed in a temple is believed to last beyond the grave. Finally, departing missionaries are expected first to receive their endowment, as a kind of spiritual reinforcement against the challenges of their missions.

I do not know how closely my experience as a young Mormon matches Romney’s. His congregation was smaller than mine, and my impression is that its young mens program was not as fully organized. For example, there is no hint of any Scouting activity in his Wikipedia biography. Romney also attended a private high school where he was the only Mormon, in contrast with my experience growing up with a mixture of Mormon and non-Mormon friends. Finally, Romney seems to have not developed his deep commitment to the Church until he was already on his mission, though it is clear he was living by the Church’s standard of conduct as a teenager. I doubt he had much contact with Mormon kitsch, the lucky boy.

Missions are hugely transformative experiences for most young men who accept the call, even if (as in my case) they were already deeply committed to the Church. As a shy and awkward teenager, I was terrified of the thought of going out into the world to share some very personal beliefs, but I did it out of the conviction that God required it of me. My mission proved a very hard lesson in basic social skills, but I feel it was the second smartest decision I ever made. I may even have done some good here and there, though I was no standout. Romney seems to have quickly deepened his religious commitment on his mission, and by all accounts he was an extraordinary missionary.

Education has always been important to Mormons, who hired a Jewish professor to teach them Hebrew at Kirtland, tried to establish a university at Nauvoo, and did establish Deseret University soon after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley. Deseret University eventually became the University of Utah, which is no longer affiliated with the Church (and how), and the Church’s flagship university became Brigham Young University. I attended BYU for my entire undergraduate education (which, if you were wondering, is the first smartest decision I ever made.) Romney attended BYU only after his mission, and primarily to court the future Ann Romney. Neither of us continued our education at BYU past our bachelor’s degrees; both of us took our graduate degrees at prestigious universities of a decidedly non-Mormon character.

What does this background tell us about Romney? As I said in the first post of this series, I believe Byron York got it right when he surmised that church and family were at Romney’s core and were the two things he would give up all his worldly success for. Romney’s record as a missionary demonstrates his deep commitment to his religion. His record also demonstrates his enormous drive to be successful at everything he puts his hand to. His upbringing in a pioneer Mormon family in a non-Mormon community suggests he may have an unusual ability to work with people who do not share all his beliefs while still holding to his Mormon values. Romney’s subsequent record displays the tension between the strong social conservatism implied by the Mormon code of conduct and the strong Mormon belief in agency and natural rights: On issues like abortion, where his public position has shifted over time, I suspect his personal convictions have in fact been quite solid (and consistent with his present political positions), while his past political positions reflected the Mormon belief that God has given humans the right to make their own mistakes. I would also guess that a President Romney would look for creative ways to work within the system, playing hard but by the rules. I’ll take up that topic in greater depth in a later post.

In short, for years he “knew” that the 8 Witnesses had examined the Gold Plates on a tree stump. But when he tried to find a source for what he knew, it turned out to be a painting. No witness at all had mentioend a tree stump.

But–and this is the point–the gold plates still existed even if the tree stump didn’t. His memory of the testimony of the 8 about the gold plates turned out to be correct. His false memory didn’t invalidate everything he knew.

That little story is a parable for three kinds of challenges to our faith.

First, most Mormons have an internal crisis of sorts about revelation from the Holy Ghost. We are afraid when we don’t get answers from that Being, because perhaps we aren’t worthy. And we are afraid when we do, because perhaps we misunderstand or are deceiving ourselves. One of the most unsettling experiences a Mormon can have is finding out that some spiritual impression was false or misinterpreted. So we often don’t seek revelation at all, because we don’t want to call into question the other revelatory moments we have had that are the basis of our testimony and the foundation of all our certainty.

This is an error. Communion with the Holy Ghost is a refining process that makes our receiver more sensitive. Part of that process is trial and error that helps us to sort out our own desires from the whisperings from above. When our interpretation of one impression turns out to be wrong, that only invalidates that one impression. We can revisit our prior revelations and receive re-confirmation from the Holy Ghost, just like Petersen re-read the witness accounts and re-confirmed that they really did see the plates.

Second, we are unsettled when some details of our big picture of the restored gospel turn out to be false. Maybe we learn that Joseph Smith did such and such, or Brigham Young taught so and so. Because our gospel worldview is a gestalt or one big whole, we feel like everything we believe is called into question.

This is an error. Our false or incomplete belief on one subject or incident does not undermine everything we already knew or believed. Nor does it mean that the gospel isn’t a gestalt where all the pieces tie together. It means that our picture of the gestalt erred in some details. Correct them. Move on.

This second point is an instance or an application of the third point, which is the human tendency to view our past and alter our memory through the lens of the present. Memory is a story that is written with the present as the theme. We want to be integrated persons, to make sense of our lives, so we unconsciously change or suppress pass details to fit in with what we’re thinking now. So the spouses who are quarrelling vividly remember all the frustrations in their marriage but can’t recapture the sweet memories they have. The Mormon who has just had something he “knew” overturned remembers all his struggles but avoids or perhaps literally forgets the miracles he’s experienced.

This is also an error. It gives too much priority to some facts just because we happen to have recently learned them; it gives too much weight to some feelings because we happen to be feeling them now. Most of all, it is uncharitable and even alienating to our past self. It shears off chunks of who we are in time to avoid a little current discomfort or cognitive dissonance.

Its been a long time.

I closed comments to this year’s post to keep the comments all in one place.

The courtesy and friendship the couple have shown during courtship are vital on their wedding night. The first night requires nearly perfect courtesy, consideration, and, in many cases, a gentle sense of good humor. They must be the very best of friends on this first occasion when they are able to begin to know one another completely. They may be ill at ease, even awkward, and would do well to smile at their awkwardness. Each must remember that the other person is vulnerable to embarrassment. And, they must realize that the greatest passions of marriage lie ahead, to increase over the years through experience and growth.

-Spencer W. Kimball

Elder Holland famously stated that sex is a marital sacrament. He uses this insight to inform how we should go about sex: viewing pornography as a intimacy enhancement would be out of bounds.

But I’m just as interested in what sex being a sacrament tells us about sex. President Kimball says sex and good humor go together. C.S. Lewis warns about the danger of making sex a little deity and counsels that we shouldn’t take it too seriously. Most couples will discover that it takes a lot of effort not to have silly moments in sex. “Brother Ass,” as St. Francis would call it, is comic. In our world around us we see too much casual sex taken too little seriously but also sex made too much a religion, or a substitute for religion. Marital sex that is at times routine, at times spiritual, and at times funny feels right and proper.

So what does this tell us about sacraments? In an odd way, it illuminates the whole general LDS view of sacraments and ordinances. We don’t act like they are unnecessary and we treat them with reverence. But they are curiously informal too. They have a family feel, a workaday comfortableness to them. The weekly sacrament is performed by teenagers, in poorly-tucked dress shirts.

What about beyond that? It tells us that communion, with God and with each other, in sex and in sacraments, is a deep delight. It can be marked by happy laughter.

During the 2008 campaign, Byron York wrote “For what it’s worth, my guess is that at the core of Romney’s being is his church and his family; if Romney were asked to surrender all his worldly success for them, he would.”

As York noted, one of the obstacles for Romney throughout the primary season was a perceived lack of “authenticity.” I believe York stumbled across the reason for the lack of authenticity: An authentic Romney would have been a deeply Mormon Romney, and Romney calculated (I fear correctly) that a deeply Mormon candidate could not win the nomination.

Now, I believe that a deeply Mormon Romney should not have been a bad thing. Modern Mormonism is conservative to its bones on social issues. It is mostly conservative — at worst, indifferent — on most other issues. A Mormon president would be most unlikely to worship at the altar of the God-state, before which so many Democrats (and, increasingly, Republicans) genuflect. Since Mormons regard the U.S. Constitution as an inspired document — an act of Providence, if you will, though most Mormons wouldn’t put it exactly that way — a Mormon president would very likely take very seriously his oath to protect and defend the Constitution. I don’t need to belabor this; one need only look at Utah, the reddest state in the Union. This is the state in which Clinton came in third in the popular vote in the 1996 election.

And I acknowledge that Mormonism is not monolithic and there is a deeply liberal minority within the faith. Likewise, I understand the distinction between theological Mormonism, which while it has much to say on social issues and righteous government, avoids entanglement in 21st century partisan politics; and cultural Mormonism, which has the qualities I just described. In this post, I am primarily concerned with cultural Mormonism and will touch on theological Mormonism only to the extend necessary to understand the roots of the culture.

But the unhappy fact is that Mormonism is regarded with deep suspicion, or worse, in many quarters. This is particularly true in the South, which is a vital battleground for any candidate for the Republican nomination. But all this goes back a long ways and it is not exclusively a Southern phenomenon. We have not quite forgotten the Smoot hearings. Given these realities, Romney’s dilemma was either to be the authentic Mormon he is, and risk a campaign even uglier than the one we have actually seen so far; or put his Mormonism — the authentic core of his being — in the background, and emphasize what he perceived to be his other strengths. So far, he has chosen the latter course. This didn’t work in 2008, but this time around Romney had time to work on his game, and he was greatly assisted by the ineptness of his opponents. (And, frankly, I believe the reason his opponents were so inept is because the more competent leaders within the Republican party were impressed by Romney’s organization, were content to see Romney nominated, and thus felt little motivation to run against him.)

It’s easy to see how this is playing out. While Romney has mostly tried to avoid talking about religion, it is not a subject people will leave him alone on. During the 2008 campaign, he tried to talk about shared beliefs using what he believed was shared language. His talk about Christ being his personal Savior was perfectly orthodox Mormonism, but expressed in Evangelical language — and the Evangelicals, who have been taught (incorrectly) by their ministers that Mormon claims to be Christian are just a charade, often didn’t buy it. In 2008, Romney correctly avoided The Speech for as long as possible, but when he finally saw no alternative but to address the issue, he misfired badly. The speech was well-crafted and intelligent, but it was about ten times longer than it should have been; it failed to persuade many Evangelicals; and it hacked off a lot of not-very-religious Republicans who felt that the lack of any mention of atheists and agnostics meant that they weren’t welcome at Romney’s table. Fortunately, the speech was also not particularly memorable, and so has done relatively little damage this time around.

Romney has campaigned on his incredible intelligence and competence, demonstrated by his impressive track record in the private sector, but this has not given him as much traction as he (or I) would like. I personally find this frustrating and deeply discouraging. But I should not have found it surprising: As the geek who was tormented by the jocks all through high school, I should have anticipated the dangers of running, in effect, as a geek.

Romney is now shifting his campaign strategy towards running as a pragmatist. This is authentic Romney, but it is also the least conservative part of the authentic Romney. Romney is a “fix-it” man — an extremely talented, capable, and authentic one — but this is not particularly a conservative trait. If there is anything conservatives agree on (and, even on this, not all do) it is that the government could use some serious downsizing. Romney has the potential to be very good at downsizing. Unfortunately, his Republican opponents came close to redefining Romney, the potential downsizer of government, into Romney, the kind of guy that downsizes you, Joe Sixpack, out of a job. It was a clever ploy that the Democrats will doubtless revive in order to deny him the Presidency — but it was a deeply dishonorable one coming from men like Gingrich, who should be the last to resort to this hoary Democratic talking point.

The charge against Romney that seems to have the strongest sticking coefficient is that he is a “flip-flopper.” But, with the exception of his stand (or should I say random walk?) on the Second Amendment, all of his flips are consistent with a steady drift to the right. Now, to some people, that doesn’t matter; they are as happy to denigrate him as “Flipper” as they are to denigrate him as “Flip-Flopper.” But every politician changes his mind on things, and I remain unconvinced that Romney is remarkable in this respect. But to a voting public already suspicious of Romney’s authenticity, the charge carries unusual heft.

Where does Romney really stand? If he’s the deeply authentic Mormon I believe he is, he regards abortion with repugnance. But you’ve heard the story about his cousin who died in a back-alley abortion, and how this affected Romney. I know: That story sounds a bit convenient to me, too, and I have my own suspicions that Romney’s pro-choice position in the campaign against Kennedy for the Senate was politicaly expedient. But I cannot rule out the possibility that Romney really was then what a lot of pro-choicers only claim to be: Personally repelled, but unwilling to enforce that judgement on others.

If that’s the case, of course, we are justified in carefully examining the sincerety of Romney’s flip on this issue. Where is the authentic Romney? Well, there is the story about how Romney, as a lay Mormon minister, advised a woman to avoid an abortion in a situation where there were serious medical concerns with continuing the pregnancy. Like anyone else, I’m guessing, but I’m guessing that that’s the authentic Romney.

Likewise, Romney’s past positions in support of civil rights for gays and lesbians has been taken as a sign that he is liberal on this social issue, but it could also be the regarded as a statement of tolerance in the best American tradition. It is also pretty much the official position of the Mormon Church, which opposes recognition of gay marriage but has generally supported anti-discrimination and anti-bullying measures for gays and lesbians in Utah. Again, if he is the deeply authentic Mormon I believe he is, his attitudes would reflect both the strict sexual mores of Mormonism and the admonition to love the sinner. I think his marriage and family reflect the former. His past calls for tolerance reflects the latter. I believe Romney is a genuinely tolerant person, and I think this should be regarded as a strength, not a weakness. I dont’ believe he was endorsing the GLB lifestyle, but was simply asking the public to stop tormenting these unfortunate souls. His “flip” on gay marriage was nothing of the kind: I believe Romney understands the difference between tolerance and endorsement, and that state recognition of gay marriage crosses the line of endorsement.

Perhaps it was a mistake for Romney to try to position himself as a conservative in the race, and he would have done better to run as the moderate Republican so many people seem to think he is. That may have been a necessary political calculation given the realities of the Republican primary. But it may also be that Romney chose to run as a conservative because his instincts are actually conservative.

In the next post, I’ll look more closely at Mitt the Mormon.

One of the ways we determine what content to focus on on Mormon Women: Who We Are is to consider the search topics and keywords that bring people to our site. We’ve had some people searching on drug and alcohol addiction, so we wanted to share some stories from people who have found recovery from such addictions and/or faced the challenge of having a loved one with an addiction to drugs or alcohol.

Mandi Gubler shares that “My husband is an addict.  His drug of choice is prescription pain killers.  I am a co-dependent which means that my drug of choice is my addict husband.  Through many miracles we have been brought back into the ever loving arms of our Savior again.  Through his Atonement we have found hope and recovery.” She shares more details of her powerful story here.

Ruth is an LDS woman in recovery from being a drug addict and alcoholic. She also suffered from eating disorders.

H.R. also was a drug addict. In his story, he also shares about his conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

All three of these people share how the gospel of Jesus Christ and the LDS Addiction Recovery program have helped them in their journey to recovery and healing.

Read stories from other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who have found recovery from addiction.

A Mormon/LDS Newsroom article shares stories of how “Individuals with Addictions Find Hope and Help”

See also this video with Mormons sharing their experiences with addiction recovery.

For stories about overcoming pornography/sex addiction (and stories of loved ones of sex addicts), see our pornography addiction personal stories index.

Mormon advocates for gay marriage and for normalizing sexual behavior can certainly quote scripture for their purposes. There is no end to scriptures on kindness, love, tolerance, and other good things. Applying them to gay marriage is hamfisted, but even so it puts faithful Mormons in the awkward position of seeming to explain away scripture. One way around this awkardness is to point out that gay marriage advocates are rightly willing to be “unkind” on premarital sex or adultery (held immoral by the Church, practiced by swathes of the American population), or racism, greed, violence, or any other number of things that also have deep roots in fundamental human impulses but that lack deep roots in contemporary American liberalism.

Another way is to do the thinking and reasoning necessary to give an informed and thoughtful response based on scripture. Shattered Glass, an article in the FARMS Review, gave just such a response to a “but God loves us” argument from a Mormon opponent of the Church’s position on Proposition 8. Said the opponent,

Why would God allow his children to be born homosexual? Because God loves all his children, none is better—or worse—than another. “And God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”

Gregory Smith’s faithful response was very good. I liked its combination of informed scriptural discussion and real world practicality:

No one disputes that God loves all his children; he is no respecter of persons (2 Chronicles 19:7; Acts 10:34; Romans 2:11; Ephesians 6:9; 1 Peter 1:17; Moroni 8:12; D&C 1:35). A reading that implies divine endorsement of homosexual acts, however, must pass too lightly over the fact that creation was declared “very good” after the creation of two genders who were given the command to “be fruitful and multiply,” but before the fall of Adam and advent of a telestial world (Genesis 1:28–31). The context does little to justify homosexual attraction or acts as either directly caused by God or desired by him—unless one argues that Adam and Eve had homosexual desires in Eden. There are innumerable things that God now permits in a telestial world—babies born deformed or mentally handicapped, people with genetic predispositions to violence or alcoholism, Huntington’s disease or schizophrenia—that only a sadist or fool would call desirable or “good” as final goals or states. While being thus afflicted is neither a sign that God does not love us nor a cause for moral condemnation, the fact that God permits such states can hardly be used as an endorsement of them. How would Compton react, I wonder, if I suggested that God allows the existence of homophobia—and that it therefore ought to be approved or even encouraged since God loves homophobes just as much as everyone else, and besides, everything that God has made is “very good”? Compton wants to cry that all is not well in Zion and yet ironically insists that all is well in the telestial world—at least as it pertains to sexual orientation.

That’s a good example of how rewarding it can be to do the hard work of giving a scripturally-faithful response to opponents’ scriptural arguments used to advance non-scriptural ends.

Recently, however, I ran across an even better example in the Book of Mormon. Abinadi went to King Noah and his priests and condemned their lifestyle–their high living and their concubines. He didn’t sugarcoat. Here’s an excerpt :

Thus saith the Lord, it shall come to pass that this generation, because of their iniquities, shall be brought into bondage, and shall be smitten on the cheek; yea, and shall be driven by men, and shall be slain; and the vultures of the air, and the dogs, yea, and the wild beasts, shall devour their flesh.

3 And it shall come to pass that the life of king Noah shall be valued even as a garment in a hot furnace; for he shall know that I am the Lord.

4 And it shall come to pass that I will smite this my people with sore afflictions, yea, with famine and with pestilence; and I will cause that they shall howl all the day long.

The priests responded by suggesting that Abinadi was violating the scriptural injunction to say nice things to people :

And it came to pass that one of them said unto him: What meaneth the words which are written, and which have been taught by our fathers, saying:

21 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings; that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good; that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth;

22 Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing; for they shall see eye to eye when the Lord shall bring again Zion;

23 Break forth into joy; sing together ye waste places of Jerusalem; for the Lord hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem;

Abinadi’s response is classic . He is not cowed or intimidated. He expounds the scriptures and the law, starting with the basic Ten Commandments and ending with the Atonement . Abinadi’s ferocious attack on sin was only the necessary prologue to a sermon on the Savior.

Most of his opponents are arguing in bad faith, of course, so they respond by burning him. But even one of his opponents, Alma, believes. And we may also assume that many others, bystander-listeners, may have also had their hearts touched.

Where is the love and the kindness in the Church’s teachings on gay marriage? As with all commandments, it is in the wide open arms of the Savior, who forgives the penitent, makes whole the flawed, and knows and comforts every tear.

Those who disagree with the the LDS Church on certain policies and positions, especially its stance on homosexuality and same-sex marriage, but also on various other policies that clash with current liberal cultural trends, often cite the Church’s former Priesthood Restriction as a precedent for the church to make further changes to accommodate their views.

In fact, for many of them the Priesthood Ban has become a useful hammer that they employ to drive their agenda. It has become a kind of folklore for heretical members of the church that is used to prop up and justify their agitation for change and rejection of prophetic authority.

The folklore goes something like this:

“Brigham Young, the second prophet and president of the church, was a terrible racist and instituted a church policy that banned black members from being ordained to the priesthood. Many doctrinal and scriptural justifications were given for the ban during the subsequent decades, but it was really only based on the racist notions common to the culture and religions of the time. In the years leading up to 1978 when the ban was finally ended, many good members of the church, including general authorities, were troubled by the restriction and questioned its origins, and some righteous souls even publicly agitated for it to end. In response to the growing challenge from members and the success of the Civil Rights movement the church lifted the ban and admitted that the scriptural and doctrinal justifications for it were wrong.”

Much of the time this narrative is taken for granted and the argument is simply made by referring to it, like this: “Just like the Brethren were wrong about the priesthood ban, they are wrong about homosexuality, and will eventually change and disavow the previous doctrines.”

This appeal to the priesthood ban as a precedent for additional changes leaves out a couple of key details that undermine the parallelism to these modern trends.

From the very beginning of the priesthood restriction, Brigham Young himself prophesied that the “time will come when [black members] will have the privilege of all we have the privilege of and more.” (February 5th, 1852 Speech before the Territorial Legislature). Subsequent prophets reiterated this prophecy that eventually the Lord would lift the ban and the priesthood would be bequeathed to all. Many of them didn’t believe it would happen until the Millennium, after Jesus returned.

In addition to the prophecies, we have very solid historical examples of black men being ordained to priesthood offices by the prophet Joseph Smith himself before the priesthood restriction was declared by President Young.

These are essential details. The disagreement in the decades culminating in ending the restriction was about the the validity of the reasons that had been suggested for the restriction, or whether or not blacks really were descended from Cain or Canaan, the proper time frame for lifting the ban, and whether it could be ended without an explicit revelation. But the idea that the priesthood could be and would be extended to blacks at the proper time was not in dispute. That is why in Official Declaration 2, in which the end of the restriction was announced, President Kimball specifically refers to these prophecies when he says they are “Aware of the promises made by the prophets and presidents of the Church who have preceded us…” and says “the long-promised day has come…”

It is this concept of an explicitly “long-promised day” that is missing from the appeals for additional changes in the church to accommodate modern sensibilities. Putting  aside controversies about whether or not the priesthood restriction was a mistake or an inexplicable decree from the Lord, the priesthood was always supposed to be extended to black members eventually.

A similar example of a “long promised day” is the extension of the gospel to the gentiles by the prophet Peter. Jesus himself had prophesied that the gospel would eventually go to the gentiles, both before His crucifixion and then again after His resurrection. So when Peter received his vision and then extended the gospel to Cornelius the Centurion and his household, upon whom the Holy Spirit had fallen, it fulfilled the earlier prophecy. Putting aside controversies over whether gentile converts needed to be circumcised, the gospel was supposed to be extended to the gentiles eventually.

There is no “long-promised day” prophesied by latter-day prophets and presidents that preceded us to which one might appeal for same-sex marriage. Neither are their solid historical examples of Joseph Smith approving of or sanctioning homosexual relationships in the way that there are of extending the priesthood to black members.

For these reasons lifting the priesthood ban is not really comparable and cannot be legitimately cited as a good precedent for new changes through agitation and public pressure by liberal members of the church.

For an excellent, faithful perspective on the priesthood ban, check out Thirty Years After the Long Promised Day: Reflections and Expectations (PDF) by brother Marcus H. Martins, who was the first black LDS member to serve a full-time mission after the restriction was ended.