Please forgive me, Moroni, for I have sinned -- on Mormons and Sausages

The LDS Temple on its launchpad
near Washington, D.C.
It's precise location:
39°0′50.68440″N 77°3′56.24639″W.
But that could change at
any moment.

On this Sunday in New Zealand, after studying Jimmy Swaggart's academy-award winning performance to learn how it is done, the Rev. Reginald Barjesus confesses his failings, sheds a few crocodile tears, and makes a public commitment before his entire congregation to broaden his mind. Earlier this week, someone pointed out to me (quite earnestly) that I have short-shrifted the Church of the Latter Day Saints and that I might find it worthwhile to study the Book of Mormon. And I confess, my personal acquaintance with things Mormon has been fleeting and can be summed up in a paragraph or two.

I've seen the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on television, narrowly averted a death-by-car-accident in Salt Lake City  (the fault lies with my wife and not with Mormon suicide-assassins), and frequently admired the wonderful spacecraft known as the Washington D.C. Temple from the Capital Beltway. I recently enjoyed that sweet moral comedy, Baptists at Our Barbeque (“A witty, surprising, and delightful film!”) which takes on the perennial theme of religious conflict in a light-hearted way (that is to say, there is very little bloodshed, for the movie is meant for children, young and old). Though I'm slightly embarrassed to admit it, I also once read The Four O'Clock Murders, a somewhat trashy true-life crime drama about a murderous Mormon patriarch and his devoted family of killers, which unlike the aforementioned movie is soaked through with blood shed for religious reasons.  It's not as bad as it sounds, though you should wash your hands after reading.

Sweetness, light and shining faces
at the Hill Cumorah Pageant.

Twice I've attended the Hill Cumorah Pageant in Palmyra, New York, where the blonde and blue-eyed dress up to play "Patriarchs and Indians" in a stunning presentation of the essential plot of the Book of Mormon. I recommend the experience to anyone, but also suggest leaving your cigarettes in the car, for once I went with a couple of Germans who insisted on smoking (the pageant is very long) and they were frowned upon, albeit politely.

The spectacle actually begins in the grassy parking lot, where the fleet of Winnebago motor homes with out-of-state tags testifies both to the breadth of the Mormon diaspora and the allure of this annual pilgrimage. The line of state troopers down the center of Route 21 is no mere fascist display; it serves an important peace-keeping function. On the west side of the highway are the sign-bearing Christian protesters (I understand that Mormons, too, consider themselves Christians; other Christians do not) who've taken time off from picketing abortion clinics to volunteer for the lighter duty of telling Mormons that they’re going to hell; on the east side of the highway, the Mormons are free to walk unmolested onto the pageant grounds. Standing between them, the state troopers in their spiffy uniforms embody the concept of the “separation of Church and State,” the real purpose of which is (and always has been) to separate Church from Church – though disparaged by religious zealots, it is what keeps them from slitting each other's throats.

The audio and visual extravaganza includes a re-enactment of the historical moment when the Angel Moroni reveals the “Golden Message” (the Book of Mormon) to Joseph Smith. Had my heart not been made of stone, I would have found this scene utterly convincing. I wondered momentarily why so much light and noise didn't draw the good citizens of Palmyra from their beds and compel them to investigate. But then I put on my thinking cap (you’ll have to bring your own, for they are not provided) and reasoned that this would have provided eye-witness support for Smith’s claims and thus reduced the significance of faith; so I concluded that, prior to his meeting with Smith, the Angel Moroni stuffed slave-picked cotton from Mississippi (my way of providing some historical context) in the ears of the sleeping Palmyrians in much the same way that the Lord hardened the hearts of the Egyptians prior to the Exodus.

Watch and sing along as the Mormon
faith spreads throughout the world.

While I have tasted from the Book of Mormon, I have not wholly imbibed its wisdom. Sure, I could point out that there are so many religions and there is so little time. But given the amazing presence of the LDS on the world stage (it is the fourth largest denomination in the USA, with 13 million members world-wide and an expected growth rate of 1 million per year), I have clearly been remiss. I have seen their missionaries, stalking their prey among the disillusioned communists of the former GDR, trying to foist upon them a different kind of faith (though I expect their resemblance to the Stasi, working in pairs to keep each other honest, did not much help their cause); and I have seen their Churches in the islands of the South Pacific, where the impoverished and semi-literate are already overburdened (and over taxed) by religious imperialists -- the Mormon Churches are clean, proud, and modern, reflecting a material wealth that attracts Islanders like flies to shit.  Thus let me reiterate: I have been remiss.

A rare photo discovered buried in
Jerry Falwell's back yard of Joseph
Smith Jr. and the Three Witnesses
(from left to right: Oliver Cowdery,
Joseph Smith, Martin Harris, David
Whitmer) creating sausage while
discussing dogma in their workshop
in Palmyra, New York in preparation
for their journey to Ohio.  The
Angel Moroni disappeared around the
time this photograph was made.
This, together with reports that the
sausages consumed on the trek were a
great source of spiritual sustenance,
has led scholars at Liberty University
to speculate that the substance in the
vats may very well be the Angel himself;
they suspect he was killed while he slept
and put through a grinder.
These were happy days for Joseph Smith
and the three Witnesses. Cowdery and
Whitmer were excommunicated in 1838;
Harris was among dissenters who
excommunicated Smith.  Smith was
assassinated before the men could renew
their friendships, though reportedly they’ve
been reconciled in heaven.

One reason I have paid such little attention to the Church of Latter Day Saints is that the faith is so gosh-darned young and I don’t think it’s fair to pick on children. “Laws are like sausages,” the saying goes (attributed to Bismarck, a conservative who liked both sausage and politics): “it is better not to see them being made.” And for those who enjoy the comforts of their faith, the same applies to religion. Most flavors of Christianity have been hallowed by time (and, one might add, tempered by the skillful application of fire to human flesh) and their origins obscured and I find them worthy of archeological investigation. But the historical proximity of the birth of Mormonism is so very near that it is as if the abattoir was right next door and, even with the windows closed, one could smell the stink seeping through the walls of the kitchen while digging into one's Swift Premium Sizzle 'N Serve fully cooked breakfast meats (registered trade mark).

It is no doubt my stony heart that prevents me from fully appreciating the significance of the manner in which the Lord revealed the Mormon truth. Clearly, choosing a dissolute treasure-hunter and practitioner of religious magic named Joseph Smith Jr. to be his emissary of hope was no mistake; the Lord was merely underscoring the importance of subjugating reason to faith. He underscored that point again by allowing only a few of Smith’s closest associates to actually see the “Golden Plates” that were translated from the distance by looking at a magical stone in the bottom of a hat and transcribed as the Book of Mormon before said plates were whisked away forever (though gold is heavy, the arms of an angel are strong). And he underscored that point again by choosing a plot, style, and language that without the guiding light of faith might indicate the hand of a 19th-century plagiarist who cherry- picked passages and ideas from books by Ethan Smith and Josiah Priest, an unpublished manuscript by Solomon Spalding, the Apocrypha and the King James Bible. Yet again he underscored that point by including language (words of Greek etymology), fauna (horses, elephants, cows, domesticated goats, pigs), flora (barley and oats), and technologies (steel, chariots, compass) that have no place in America during the period (2500 BC to 400 AD) in which the divine message was etched in gold – something that without the guiding light of faith would indicate anachronism, ahistoricism and perhaps even duplicity. I myself have always wondered about the striking linguistic similarity between the Angel “Moroni” and the word “moron” -- I thought the latter might have been coined by strident Baptists as a way of slighting the new kids on the block. But the word “moron” actually comes from the Greek μωρός, meaning “foolish.” A mind unguided by the light of faith might speculate that Joseph Smith Jr. was playing a little joke, poking fun at his newly gathered flock while sharpening his shears. Of course, a more enlightened conclusion is that the Lord was simply encouraging the faithful (in the manner of St. Paul) to be “fools for Christ,” of which there are plenty.

One reason for Mormonism's astounding
success was the theological principle
that every man should have his own
sausage factory. Indeed, it was this
basic belief that led to the practice
of polygamy, as each man required his
own pool of labor. Once women started
touching the meat, however, sausages
lost their spiritual significance. After
1904, when the LDS renounced polygamy
for the second time, the Mormon sausage
industry went into a steep decline from
which it never recovered. Joseph Smith's
notion that there should be "a sausage
for every stew" which he proclaimed
loudly in his bid for the Presidency
in 1843, resurfaced later in a slightly
different form as "a chicken in every pot,"
a slogan put to good use by Herbert Hoover
in 1928, though by then all Moron connotations
had disappeared. Sausage making is no longer
part of the Mormon tradition. While some men
on the fundamentalist fringe still practice
polygamy, they do so to increase welfare
payments by farming children and to staff
vacuum cleaner repair shops. The practice
is looked upon with disapproval by mainstream
members of the Church of Latter Day Saints.

I confess that the candle light of faith glows but dimly in my shallow cranium (though if I hollowed out the cavity a little, allowing for a little more air flow, and perhaps lined the walls with reflective aluminum tape, things might improve. I wonder if the surgery required will be covered under the new healthcare reform bill in USA, or would I only be covered if I go to jail --  thank God I'm in New Zealand).  Yet perhaps by pondering the Book of Mormon, I may discover the key to my salvation.  For isn't it truly miraculous that human beings who can string together a sentence or, say, ride a bicycle can embrace the Book of Mormon as a source of religious truth?  Indeed, Mormons do much more than that: they articulate elaborate apologetics to abolish doubt, make bids for the Presidency (as in the case of Joseph Smith Jr.in 1843 and, more, recently Mitt Romney), drive Winnebagos so successfully that their rate of accidents does not deviate from the national average, retroactively baptize dead Jews so that they might go to heaven, finally allow blacks to become priests (1978), and even secretly construct a spacecraft right under our noses that will lift them out of here when the world economy implodes (the count down starts -- wait for it -- NOW).  There must be a God.  What have I been thinking?