[cross-posted from my blog]

Come, thou Fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love.

This morning , I was listening as usual to the 7 am rebroadcast of last week’s “Music and the Spoken Word” on BYU TV (I’m usually at church when the 9:30 am live broadcast comes on). The closing number was “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”, always one of my favorite hymns (and one that needs to be in our LDS hymn books). By the end of the performance, I was weeping — and not (just) because of the beauty of the arrangement and the singing. This hymn, like few others, speaks to my deepest struggles and frustrations in my own personal life.

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I, Zeniff, having been taught in all the language of the Nephites, and having had a knowledge of the land of Nephi, or of the land of our fathers’ first inheritance, and having been sent as a spy among the Lamanites that I might spy out their forces, that our army might come upon them and destroy them — but when I saw that which was good among them I was desirous that they should not be destroyed. . . .

And yet, I being over-zealous to inherit the land of our fathers, collected as many as were desirous to go up to possess the land, and started again on our journey into the wilderness to go up to the land . . .

And I went into the king [of the Lamanites], and he covenanted with me that I might possess the land of Lehi-Nephi, and the land of Shilom. And he also commanded that his people should depart out of the land, and I and my people went into the land that we might possess it. . . .

Now it was the cunning and the craftiness of king Laman, to bring my people into bondage, that he yielded up the land that we might possess it. . . .

Therefore it came to pass that king Laman began to stir up his people that they should contend with my people; therefore there began to be wars and contentions in the land. For, in the thirteenth year of my reign in the land of Nephi, away on the south of the land of Shilom, when my people were watering and feeding their flocks, and tilling their lands, a numerous host of Lamanites came upon them and began to slaw them, and to take off their flocks, and the corn of their fields. . . . (from Mosiah 9)

Discuss, with extra credit for any modern-day applications (keep it civil, folks).  ..bruce..

P.S. I should have noted this in the original post: the phrase “useful idiot” has a long history in geopolitics.

Our high priests group lesson today was on the Atonement. Our instructor, a lawyer, asked a question that frankly had the rest of us stumped — or, at least, unwilling to purely speculate.

The question: What qualified Christ to become part of the Godhead while still an unembodied spirit? (Yes, he was the firstborn among God’s spirit children, but why? Was he that much better as an pre-spirit intelligence? If so, why?)

For that matter, what qualified the Holy Ghost to likewise be selected as part of the Godhead while an unembodied spirit?

Thoughts?  ..bruce..

A few months back, I noticed that my own LDS blog was getting hits for “Mormon Anti-Christ”, apparently from people looking for the Mormon concept of a latter-day Anti-Christ. I wrote up a post on the subject, which I then ended with this post-script:

I get the impression from what little research I’ve done that Catholics are much more skeptical [than Evangelists] about the idea of there being a literal, individual, powerful AntiChrist as a precursor to the Savior’s second coming — probably because, as the Catholic Encyclopedia entry cited above states, Protestants have been claiming for centuries that the Pope is the AntiChrist. What makes that so interesting is that in most horror movies about the rise of the AntiChrist — e.g., “The Omen” — it seems that it’s almost always the Catholics who are fighting against him. On the other hand, it seems like there’s often a group of renegade or corrupted Catholic priests and nuns who are supporting and protecting him. So for all us Mormons who complain about media bias, realize that it could be a lot worse — no one’s made a movie that shows the AntiChrist being born in Spanish Fork, attending BYU, and serving an LDS mission, before going to work for the Marriott Corporation, all the while being protected by a 21st century band of Danites. Yet. Hmm…maybe I’ll write a screenplay.

I even have a title for it: “Oh My Heck!”

OK, time to have some fun. Let’s hear some of your ideas for fleshing out this mythical screenplay. ..bruce..

P.S. I don’t have permission to add categories, so I’ll have to let the MM powers-that-be decide how to categorize this one.  ..bfw..

It struck me this morning that what may appear at first glance to be a concession by the FLDS Church to government pressure may actually be a very clever legal ploy. First, here’s the (apparent) concession:

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints made the startling announcement Monday that it will no longer allow underage girls to marry adults within their sect. . . .

The announcement applies to both the group’s “spiritual” unions and legal marriages. The minimum age to marry in Texas is 16, but only with parental permission.

Note that there is no promise of an end to polygamous marriages — just that only girls of the age of legal consent will be allowed to marry, either legally (in the eyes of Texas) or ’spiritually’ (meaning 2nd and subsequent wives).

By taking this step — and assuming it’s enforced — the FLDS Church has removed virtually any cause of action for the state of Texas. If the girls getting ‘married’ (legally or otherwise) are of age, then Texas can’t claim sexual, physical, or emotional abuse absent some compelling evidence — and Texas has come up not only empty but looking a bit embarrassed on that issue. And since the FLDS Church (to my knowledge) doesn’t atttempt to file the ’spiritual’ marriages as legals ones with the state of Texas, then Texas can’t bring bigamy charges.

There is a bit of a gap in this strategy as it stands. Texas allows marriage at age 16 (with parental consent), but it does not allow sex outside of marriage between a 16-year-old and an adult. Since Texas does not recognize the ’spiritual’ marriages as legal marriages, it could still prosecute any ’spiritual’ marriage involving a 16-year-old as statutory rape. However, if the FLDS Church simply bans ’spiritual’ marriages for anyone under the age of 17, then Texas is left without a cause.

What could Texas do at that point? I’m not sure they could bring up US v. Reynolds, which applied to actual marriages. I don’t know that Texas has any statutory prohibition against “unlawful cohabitation”, and if it did, I suspect it would get thrown out of court faster than you can say “Lawrence v. Texas.” At some point here, Texas’s insistence on constant monitoring of the YFZ compound will provide credible grounds for complaints that the FLDS Church being singled out religious persecution and will likely bring that monitoring to an end.

In short, Texas’s heavy-handed (and overturned) reaction to what appears to have been a series of crank phone calls may result in de facto legal acceptance of polygamy, so long as no attempt is made to file the additional marriages with state authorities.

Thoughts? ..bruce..

UPDATED: Here’s a news story that shows — if you read carefully — just how tough it’s going to be for Texas to pursue any criminal action for past acts. Note the passing comment that the calls from ‘Sarah’ (the allegedly abused teenager whose calls started this whole raid) continued after all the children had been removed from the ranch.  ..bfw..

I woke up this morning to the local (Denver Channel 2) news reporting that a Colorado Springs woman had been arrested for “false reporting” in connection with the Texas raid on the FLDS compound in Texas. I couldn’t find information on that channel’s website, but one of the TV stations down in Colorado Spring had this story on their website:

Colorado Springs Police say a woman arrested for false reporting in Colorado Springs has not been charged at this time in connection with the Texas case.

Springs Police confirm the Texas Rangers were in the city Wednesday as part of their investigation into the compound. A spokesperson for the Texas Rangers confirms they have had several calls about an out-of-state arrest, but they have no comment at this time.

Springs Police will only confirm that 33-year-old Rozita Swinton was arrested Wednesday evening for False Reporting in connection with a February incident in Colorado Springs.

There is no word on what her connection might have been in the Texas case, in which hundreds of children were seized from a polygamist compound.

This came after someone claiming to be a 16-year-old girl called an abuse hot line claiming her husband — a 50-year-old member of the sect — beat and raped her. The girl has yet to be identified by investigators.

As if this whole situation weren’t complicated and messy enough. ..bruce..

Like most Latter-day Saints in North America (and probably quite a few around the world), I have watched the events in Texas regarding the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS Church) unfold with a mixture of feelings. I believe there are some serious moral, legal, and Constitutional issues here, but I will leave that discussion in the hands of those better equipped to argue on both sides.

Even with my deep-rooted commitment to religious pluralism — which predates my own conversion to the LDS Church — I find myself wincing over the various details that keep coming forth in the aftermath of the raids on the FLDS compound. I worry both for those who have been caught up in this as well as for my own church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), since this will only serve to reinforce unfounded stereotype already prevalent about “Mormons” not just in the US but around the world

What has struck me, though, is that the FLDS Church, and particularly the Yearning For Zion (YFZ) group in Texas, reflects what I suspect many ‘liberal’ or ‘disaffected’ Mormons fear the LDS Church would become were it not for their valiant efforts. I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but only somewhat; many who grumble or rant about ’savage misogyny’ or ‘patriarchal abuse’ in the LDS Church likely feel that the FLDS Chuch is where we’re headed unless Church leaders pay attention to them.

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Please join us in welcoming our newest permablogger, bfwebster. This is his inaugural post at Mormon Mentality.

Millennium — A thousand years of genealogy, temple work, proselytizing, and filling out reports, a prospect that can make wickedness and destruction look downright enticing. — Orson Scott Card, Saintspeak: A Mormon Dictionary (Orion Books, 1981)

Let me start by clarifying my premises. I fully believe in the prophecies regarding the tribulations of the last days preceding the second coming of Jesus Christ, as well as Christ’s reign upon the earth during a thousand-year period (the “Millennium”), to be followed by a great war and the transformation of the earth itself. I also think that the Book of Mormon events recorded in Helaman and 3rd Nephi are an effective type and shadow of the last days (and that Mormon deliberately cast them as such).
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