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BrianR
Tufted Titmouse
Joined: Jun 29, 2005
Posts: 33
Location: Denver, Colorado
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 Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 11:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Fogman wrote: |
From what I understand, Polygamy is still practiced, not only by Mormon Fundamentalists living in the desert, but by regular mainstream Mormons as well. It is my understanding that even though this practice is a for the most part an underground phenomenon, it is essentially tolerated by church elders.
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Most people these days know about the fundamentalists in the desert still doing polygamy, but if it's still going on in the mainstream Utah church, they do a very good job of keeping it quiet. Mind you, it's still the official doctrine of the church, and there are a LOT of mormon men out there who can't wait to get their extra wives assigned to them in heaven (my dad was definitely in that category), but it is NOT openly sanctioned. It was quietly sanctioned until about the 1930's among the church elite, so I wouldn't be surprised if being from the right bloodlines still gets you into the club today, but if that's the case, the mainstream church members don't hear about it. I was never in any leadership positions (I was a sunday school teacher and choir director for a few years each), so I certainly did not ever get any sort of elite status.
The mormon belief in semitic peoples in the Americas has become a problem for them since the advent of modern DNA analysis. When I was a kid I was taught that ALL of the native peoples of the Americas were descended directly from a group of Jews that fled from Israel just before they were conquered by the Babylonians. (There had been an earlier migration, as you mentioned, at the time of the tower of Babel, but they had all died out.) In fact, the preface page in the book of mormon still says as much. In the last 10 years or less they have begun teaching their kids that the Jews in America were mostly wiped out, and the rest mixed with other people who had come here from other parts of the world. Basically, they couldn't refute the overwhelming evidence that the native Americans came from central Asia. And there is no trace of semitic ancestry to be found among them. So the mormons quietly adjusted their teachings to match modern science, but it is a total turnabout from what they were teaching when I was a kid. So if you ask any mormon young adults today about the origins of the native Americans, they give the new answer, and they don't even know that the anser was recently changed (and their parents are quietly avoiding discussing this with them).
The RLDS church is a lot closer to mainstream Christianity. They split off when Brigham Young took over the church because they belived that Joseph Smith's son was God's chosen heir to lead the church. So Smith's own family never endorsed Brigham Young, but Young already hated Lucy Smith (Joe's wife) because she very vocally opposed polygamy.
My wife was born and raised in Provo, and I believe I know right where the youth detention center is on State Street between Provo and Springville. I moved there (Provo, not the detention center) when I was 15 (in 1979) and it was quite a change from the San Francisco area where I had been living before. I can definitely see that coming from a big city on the East Coast that Provo would seem like some flash back from the 50s on another planet.
There is actually a tie-in to AS in all of this. Conformity is much more strongly enforced in the mormon culture than in main stream America (or anywhere else in the modern world). There were some quirks that were OK, like being academically gifted, or having musical talent, or obsessing over you achievements. But thinking for yourself or expecting answers to life's questions that actually make sense were NOT tolerated. So I learned to adapt by either keeping my mouth shut and hiding quietly in my ow corner of the world, or by learning to act out my assigned part.
But the iron grip of mormonism over its people, even in Utah, is beginning to loosen. It should be pretty interesting to see how this plays out as some of my nieces and nephews grow up. I have one nephew who is a classic case of AS / ADHD (just like his dad, who is a closet atheist but terrified to stand up to my sister that he's married to). And I have a teenage niece who's a very butch lesbian (and her mom is is serious denial about it). So "different" was swept under the carpet when I was growing up, but I don't think that's going to go over too well with the next generation.
There's actually a lot of geeks and intellectuals in the mormon population who have been taught to keep their mouths shut. You can enforce that sort of expectation when they can be kept in social isolation, but the internet is changing all that so that even those who are hopelessly socially inept can actually find people to communicate with. |
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Fogman
Econo-class Iconoclast
Joined: Jun 20, 2005
Age: 46
Posts: 3196
Location: Ноуя Англия
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| Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 1:33 am Post subject: |
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| BrianR wrote: | | Most people these days know about the fundamentalists in the desert still doing polygamy,.... but it is NOT openly sanctioned. It was quietly sanctioned until about the 1930's among the church elite, so I wouldn't be surprised if being from the right bloodlines still gets you into the club today..... |
Hmm... a ridgidly stratified elite who's rules of peerage are differant than that of the little people. The Irony here being that we shed this 229 years ago, but we still resort to establishing elite classes who's rules are much more relaxed than those of the common prole. --Classic Conservatism in my book.
On the other hand, this was a topic of discussion on a listserv that I used to belong to back in 1999. The topic of polygamy and Mormonism came up, and one of the people on the list was living in SLC. He confirmed that this still went on, and was for the most part quietly tolerated.
| BrianR wrote: | | My wife was born and raised in Provo, and I believe I know right where the youth detention center is on State Street between Provo and Springville. I moved there (Provo, not the detention center) when I was 15 (in 1979) and it was quite a change from the San Francisco area where I had been living before. I can definitely see that coming from a big city on the East Coast that Provo would seem like some flash back from the 50s on another planet. |
To be perfectly honest with you, I have no idea of where this is, but I do remember that I could look out my window and see I-15, and past that, Desert and Mountains.
I'm from Portland. Maine, which isn't really a big city (The Metro area was around 250,000) in 1982. But yeah, the culture is a bit more Urbane, and if you're from a working class neighborhood like the one that I'm from, a LOT more Catholic as well. There are a lot of paralells between East Coast Catholicism and Mormonism as far as Church Hiarchy goes, as well as some of the conformist behavior. However, much as some try to hide from it, Catholics have known and many openly state that their church leadership is corrupt, and generally not worth the price of a golden Goblet. It's been that for about five centuries now, but Catholics still believe in turning out and celebrating the election of a new pope because it's as good a reason as any to have a good time.--Jesus Saves, Jesus Spends!
| BrianR wrote: | | There is actually a tie-in to AS in all of this. Conformity is much more strongly enforced in the mormon culture than in main stream America (or anywhere else in the modern world). There were some quirks that were OK, like being academically gifted, or having musical talent, or obsessing over you achievements. But thinking for yourself or expecting answers to life's questions that actually make sense were NOT tolerated. So I learned to adapt by either keeping my mouth shut and hiding quietly in my ow corner of the world, or by learning to act out my assigned part. |
I watched the special Friday edition of Dateline last week, and one of the stories they had was about a familiy of five kids from Utah, who had more or less learned to play piano from birth. All of them were more or less shoo-ins to Julliard. I don't know what their parents did for a living, but I did notice that they all more or less had their own full Grand Piano to practice on. If the Father of the family was an insurance salesman, I would like to think that the Mormon church either bought them the Pianos, or lent them, as needed.
| BrianR wrote: | | But the iron grip of mormonism over its people, even in Utah, is beginning to loosen. It should be pretty interesting to see how this plays out as some of my nieces and nephews grow up. I have one nephew who is a classic case of AS / ADHD (just like his dad, who is a closet atheist but terrified to stand up to my sister that he's married to). And I have a teenage niece who's a very butch lesbian (and her mom is is serious denial about it). So "different" was swept under the carpet when I was growing up, but I don't think that's going to go over too well with the next generation. |
I currently live in South Carolina, and what's that's somewhat the same as what's happening here with the Southern Baptists. Those who see the light are changing, those who don't are becoming more rabidly vitriolic to the point where many people are really beginning to hate them.
| BrianR wrote: | | There's actually a lot of geeks and intellectuals in the mormon population who have been taught to keep their mouths shut. You can enforce that sort of expectation when they can be kept in social isolation, but the internet is changing all that so that even those who are hopelessly socially inept can actually find people to communicate with. |
Totalitarian regimes are usually so fixed in their way of doing things that a piece of technology as seeming mundane as a fax can hasten their downfall. Look at what happened with the ill fated hardline coup in the USSR in 1991. The resistance organised largely by word of mouth, and Faxmachine. [/quote] |
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Tom
bass martian
Joined: Oct 20, 2004
Age: 30
Posts: 1544
Location: Where you least expect it
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| Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 3:23 am Post subject: |
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| So if a church says "Latter Day Saints" it's a Mormon church. I guess there are more Mormon churches round here than I realised. |
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aspiegirl2
Aurtistic Rainwoman
Joined: Feb 24, 2005
Age: 24
Posts: 1461
Location: Washington, USA
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| Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2006 1:07 am Post subject: |
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I've read that Mormons, when they count their church records (which they say are around 12 million), they actually count the records that say "resigned" on them. Some say "resigned" because they resigned from the Church. There are lots of Mormons at my school (I'm not one; I'm a Christian that attends church at a Foursquare congregational church); one of them that I've talked to hates going to church and wants to drop out when she's 18. Although Mormons have some of the best social and educational systems in the world, I disagree with the majority of their doctrine; of course I'm not the one who judges who is and who's not Christian. I believe that for one to be Christian they have to ask for Christ to forgive them for their sins, believing that He died for their sins and that He's risen again on the third day so that they can be reconciled to them. Anyways, I've debated Mormonism before and so I know some Mormon stuff eventhough I haven't attended church with them. It's difficult for me to be judgemental because I love all of my Mormon friends, but then again I want to tell them the truth (although I don't know how'd they'd take it).
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I'm 24 years old and live in WA State. I was diagnosed with Asperger's at 9. I received a BS in Psychology in 2011 and I intend to help people with Autistic Spectrum Disorders, either through research, application, or both. On the “Pursuit of Aspieness”. |
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Ganondox
Visceral Diety
Joined: Oct 08, 2011
Age: 17
Posts: 3615
Location: Indonesia
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| Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 10:40 am Post subject: |
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You people are just as crazy as Mormons.
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Cinnamon and sugary
Softly Spoken lies
You never know just how you look
Through other people's eyes
Autism FAQs http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt186115.htm |
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