Alone and Unobserved

It is endlessly fascinating to me to discover the blinkers that people have over their eyes—the unquestioned biases and hidden assumptions that color everything they experience and everything they do. I recently had an experience where religious blinkers became very evident. On Monday and Tuesday this week, Frontline showed a four-hour program on the Mormon Church, highlighting its doctrines, history, members, former members, and future.

[Disclaimer: I haven't seen this program, so everything I know about it is from the website I just linked to and what I've heard others say about it. Bear that in mind.]

A few Mormon acquaintances of mine were rehashing the show after the fact, and it came out that, while they found it to be generally balanced, they thought the producers had placed too much emphasis on certain things, the uncomfortable things, and not enough on the nicer, cleaner parts of Mormonism. Specifically, they thought too much time had been spent on polygamy and the Mormon Meadows Massacre, and not enough on things like the Utah War and distinctive Mormon doctrine. As I discovered when I pressed them, it turns out that what counts as “distinctive doctrine” is canonical, pronounced by no less than Joseph Smith himself:

“Of an interview in 1839 between the Prophet Joseph Smith and Martin Van Buren, who was then president of the United States, the following was recorded: ‘In our interview with the President, he interrogated us wherein we differed in our religion from the other religions of the day. Brother Joseph said we differed in mode of baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands. We considered that all other considerations were contained in the gift of the Holy Ghost.’”
(James E. Faust, “Communion with the Holy Spirit,” Ensign, Mar 2002, 2–7, quoting History of the Church)

I am far from conceding that Joseph Smith was correct in his assessment of his own religion (or maybe the stranger doctrines hadn’t shown up yet at that point), but his words are hardly valid today. Baptism by immersion is widely practiced among Protestant denominations, and even the baptismal prayer is fairly standard (being based as it is on the “Father, Son and Holy Ghost” formula introduced in Matthew 28:19)—to the point that the Catholic Church generally recognized Mormon baptisms as valid until 2001, when the Mormon definition of God got in the way.

As far as the gift of the Holy Ghost is concerned, other churches may not use that exact phrase, but since the New Testament contains not only Jesus’ words to Nicodemus (“Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit . . .”), but also the account of the Day of Pentecost and multiple instances of conferring the Spirit by the laying on of hands, it is not surprising that very similar ideas are found in the doctrines of several Protestant churches.

During this discussion, the other participants kept on providing arguments that worked in the context of Mormonism, but fell flat when considered from the outside. Sure, Mormons don’t believe that other churches have the gift of the Holy Ghost, or that other churches have the authority to confer it, or even to baptize. But that belief is not what makes Mormonism unique—most religions are based on the idea that theirs is only truth, theirs the only authority, theirs the only true manifestations of the Holy Ghost. What makes Mormonism unique are the quirky, odd, horrid and/or disturbing things . . . like polygamy and the massacre.

In the end, I think it is this inability to objectively consider one’s own beliefs (a condition not at all exclusive to Mormons, by the way) that makes it so hard for adherents of different faiths, or for an atheist and a believer, to have any kind of meaningful dialogue. People who speak different languages have a better chance at understanding each other sometimes.

I sometimes wonder, though, how many religious people would be left if everyone actually examined their beliefs with a critical eye. But that’s just me being cynical again.