on faith of the golden plates

The smoke clears on the stage set below Hill Cumorah. The Angel Moroni begins burying the golden  plates. Finally, the scene reverts to a youthful Joseph Smith, which symbolizes that the gap has been brought full circle and the only true American religion is set to begin. There are few more dramatic stories than Mormonism. They are enacting the bible, they are out there on the road to Damascus. Its a new story that has no history so there is no sectarian fight over meaning. You swallow it or you walk, and once you accept it, there’s not much to fight over. Mormonism is a kind of tabula rasa, a turning of the page that created a new story in the new world for which there was no historical precedent. Mormon history is young like America. In 1830, the year the Book of Mormon was published, Joseph Smith formally organized the denomination known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. …

Mormons in Mongolia. ---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.---Read More:http://churchoftherebarjesus.blogspot.com/2010/03/please-forgive-me-moroni-for-i-have.html image:http://dancarlinca.tripod.com/index.blog/1478139/mormons-in-mongolia/

The Sacred Grove, and an angel named Moroni who hovered above Smith’s bed and told him where to find the golden plates. In September 1827, Smith was considered worthy enough to take the plates away and translate its script into the English language. We know how it ends: a battle worthy of Revelation in which the Lamanites, seen by Mormons to be the ancestors of Native Amerindians, smite the Nephites in one final, blood soaked and epic battle. A kind of nihilism that restores Christianity to its true form and at the same time evolving an ethnic identity which appears almost completely white.

Whether they are descendants of Christ’s , in mid-air on a visit to an ancient tribe of Israel in the Western Hemisphere, just after his crucifixion and resurrection, is a matter of faith only. What is not disputed is that Mormonism arose out of a period of religious fervor known as the Great Awakening in which new sects branched out over different interpretations of the Biblical texts and also spawned utopian projects like Brook Farm and New Harmony.

However, the intrigue of Mormonism is that it contains tribes, characters, and prophets that remain unknown and undocumented to the near entirety of world’s traditional Christian faith.Polygamous lifestyles and depictions of a violent strain as part of the faith’s DNA seem more a red herring than the scholarly assertions of completing the Bible, which perhaps ingeniously ties in with the concept of American exceptionalism and the idea of a chosen nation.  If the original plates ever make the round trip back from heaven, it would give the opportunity to corroborate the translation into English text.

---Jews really, really don't want their Holocaust victims baptized by proxy into the Mormon religion. The Jews, of course, think the whole concept of baptism of dead people is ridiculous, but it still bugs them that the Mormons won't stop doing it. Ernie Michel, a long-time crusader against the Mormon practice, was appalled to find out his parents, who were murdered at Auschwitz, had been claimed by the LDS church: My mother and father were killed in the Holocaust for no other reason than they were Jews. How can the Mormons victimize them a second time and falsely claim their souls for eternity? Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Mormon, explained to Michel that this baptizing of the dead was "done out of love for Jewish people." Apparently, Mormons love Jews so much they want to erase their Jewishness in the hereafter.---Read More:http://blogs.sltrib.com/slcrawler/2008/11/maybe-plague-of-frogs.htm

 

ADDENDUM:
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….

---Thus, we get a musical where one song has a chorus of “Fuck you, God,” but later the entire cast sings “Tomorrow Is a Latter Day,” a song so unabashedly warm and fuzzy it’s hard to believe it’s not in the Children’s Primary Songbook and that Deseret Book doesn’t sell rings with the acronym TIALD. The balance of sweet-and-sour is so finely tuned that while Elder Price (Andrew Rannells) sings about his Mormon beliefs (Jesus came to America, God lives on a planet called Kolob, etc.) in a way that must sound crazy to non-Mormons, at the same time, there’s no doubt that everyone in the theater is rooting for the elder as a hero. The main theme of the show is that while everyone is entitled to believe what they want, it’s your good works that really matter. Using that as a measure of a religion, it’s clear that Parker, Stone and Lopez think quite highly of Mormons.Read More:http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/article-13534-review-the-book-of-mormon-musical.html

…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. Read More:http://churchoftherebarjesus.blogspot.com/2010/03/please-forgive-me-moroni-for-i-have.html

Read More:http://www.mormonartistsgroup.com/Mormon_Artists_Group/Glimpses_Nephis_Colored_Plates.html
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