https://americancynic.net/Atom Feed for 'mormonism' Features2022-02-28T21:08:44ZAmer Canishttps://americancynic.net/about/tag:americancynic.net,2015-01-20:/log/2015/1/20/dyer_lum_on_the_civil_and_mormon_wars/Dyer Lum on the Civil and Mormon Wars2015-01-20T15:43:34Z2019-01-22T16:43:57Z<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
The present struggle between the South and North is, therefore, nothing but a struggle between two social systems, the system of slavery and the system of free labour. The struggle has broken out because the two systems can no longer live peacefully side by side on the North American continent. It can only be ended by the victory of one system or the other.
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<div class="attribution">
— Karl Marx<br>
<cite><a href="https://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/marx/works/1861/11/07.htm">The Civil War in the United States (1861)</a></cite>
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<blockquote>
“Where then is the remedy? Politics offers none. Our political state is based on the present economic condition of things.”
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<div class="attribution">
— Dyer Lum
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<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_civil_war">Civil War</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Slavery becomes non-conducive to capitalism. Slave ownership is a large and fixed investment which is unsuitable to quickly changing industrial markets. During economic downturns it is less expensive to fire a worker than to sell a slave. And as industry expands, even the slave-owning agricultural sectors of an economy begin to conflict with the interests of capitalists. Slave owners hold a substantial portion of the labour force off of the labour market reducing competition for jobs and forcing capitalists to pay higher wages than would be the case if slaves' labour power were available on the market. What capitalists want is as much unemployed but available labour at their disposal as possible (without causing riots) — that, and labourers who are responsible for housing and feeding themselves.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>That is why at the rise of capitalism in Europe serfdom was abolished, the commons were enclosed to force the peasants off of their land (and their means of subsistence), and finally harsh vagrancy laws and forced-labour workhouses were established to coerce the first wage workers into the factories. And that is why, in the United States during the 19th century, the industrial North increasingly came into conflict with the slave-owning South. The war eventually crushed the slaveholders' economy and established wage work as the basis of capitalism throughout the Union while providing former slaves' labour power to the labour market as free workers.</p>
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<div class="content">
<img src="/log/2015/1/20/dyer_lum_on_the_civil_and_mormon_wars/Dyer_D_Lum.jpg" alt="Dyer D. Lum">
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<div class="title">Dyer D. Lum</div>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>One of the early writers to give such an economic theory of the forces which lead to the American Civil War was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyer_Lum">Dyer Lum (1839 – 1893)</a> who became an influential anarchist and labor activist toward the end of the 19th-century. Writing in 1886 he said of the capitalist North and the agrarian-slavery South, “They were rival industrial systems which had met in the same path, and one must give way. The war followed.”<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_1" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_1" title="View footnote.">1</a>]</sup> Lum, eager to do his part in ending slavery, volunteered for and served the Union forces for three years. But upon observing the way the South was re-integrated into the union after the war in terms favorable to speculators, military contractors, and monopolists, he had second thoughts about the ultimate purpose of the war.</p>
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<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
To-day, South and North alike admit the fundamental principle of our industrial system, the corner stone of our economic structure: <em>Free labor is cheaper than slave labor!</em> Employers without responsibilities could find new fields for enterprise when the system which entailed responsibilities was once removed. The South are converted; the poverty of a factory population is no longer an Eastern peculiarity. The gray meets blue in hearty union to draw dividends and cut coupons. They have found free labor the <em>cheapest</em>. (88)
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<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_mormon_wars">Mormon Wars</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Just as the Civil War had brought the South into alignment with the capitalist system of wage labour, Lum saw the Federal repression of the Mormons in Utah as an attempt to undo the cooperative-based economy the Mormons had established in order to expose them to the exploitation of the industrial East. It was for the expansion of capitalism, Lum wrote, “that the cry has gone forth that the Mormon must go!”</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Lum, who traveled to Utah as part of a congressional committee on labor issues, had a very high regard for Mormon society. In one of his booklets he wrote, “The whole Mormon system, social, religious, industrial, is essentially based on two fundamental principles: <em>cooperation</em> in business and <em>arbitration</em> in disputes” (which he contrasted to the mainstream American values of capitalism and civil litigation).<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_2" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_2" title="View footnote.">2</a>]</sup> He was so enamored with their cooperative businesses that he viewed Utah as perhaps the most successful socialist country anywhere: “The living question of the present is that stated in the preamble of the constitution of the Knights of Labor as ‘the abolishment of the wage system,’ a problem the Mormon alone has solved.” (86)</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Lum was writing at a time when the United States government was taking advantage of American bigotry toward Mormons and polygamy in order to pass legislation aimed at dismantling the Mormon society. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmunds_Act">Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act of 1882</a> disenfranchised Mormons and put many of their leaders in jail while the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmunds%E2%80%93Tucker_Act">Edmunds–Tucker Act of 1887</a> disincorporated the LDS Church, seized its property, and replaced Utah judges with federally-appointed judges.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>But the war against Mormons began before the Civil War. In the 1830s, not long after Joseph Smith founded his church, Mormons began settling in Missouri. They did not find many friends among their new neighbors. Not only were the Mormon immigrants vocally against slavery (in a slave-holding state), but they voted. At one polling place in 1838, around 200 non-Mormon Missourians gathered to prevent Mormons from voting. The Mormons asserted their rights, and a brawl broke out. The skirmish at the polls was the first violence in a series of minor armed conflicts and raids that took place between Mormons and Missourians known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1838_Mormon_War">1838 Mormon War</a>.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>On October 27, 1838, the governor of Missouri, Lilburn Boggs, issued Executive Order 44, which has become known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Executive_Order_44">Extermination Order</a>. The order read in part:</p>
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<blockquote>
The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace—​their outrages are beyond all description.
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<div class="attribution">
— From Boggs' Extermination Order
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The Mormons (around 10,000 of them) were expelled from Missouri and found refuge in Illinois (and then eventually in the Utah Territory). While they were chased out of Missouri for threatening the slave economy there, they were also nearly chased out of Utah for threatening the expansion of capitalism.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>In 1857-1858, President James Buchanan sent thousands of US troops to invade the Utah Territory in what has been called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_War">Mormon War</a>. The Nauvoo Legion, the Mormon’s militia, activated and held the Federal troops at the border (in what is now Wyoming) where both armies made winter camp.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Of course the Mormons knew that if the Federal troops were intent on entering Utah, they could not be held off for long. Brigham Young wanted to avoid any open fighting if possible. So in March of 1858 he began executing an evacuation plan. In northern Utah (including Salt Lake City), Mormons buried the foundation of the temple they were constructing, put kindling to their buildings, and as many as 30,000 fled southward leaving only enough men behind to set fire to everything in case the Army entered the territory.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>When it became clear that the Mormons would rather burn their territory than give up their mode of living, a peace accord was reached with the federal government. The terms of the agreement allowed the Mormons to return to their homes and continue living unmolested, and in return Young was replaced as governor of the territory and the Army was allowed to enter and maintain a remote fort. Federal troops remained in Utah until they were withdrawn to fight the Civil War in 1862.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>But against the renewed persecution of the 1880s, of which Lum and other American anarchists wrote, the Mormons were not as victorious. In 1890 the LDS Church capitulated and renounced polygamy; in 1896 Utah joined the Union as the 45th state and became increasingly integrated into the capitalist economy. The hierarchical structure of the Church fit well with capitalism and became a weapon against the more democratic elements of its priesthood.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The church today owns significant for-profit (non-cooperative) property, including businesses which employ church members (who <em>also</em> pay tithes). Some of the profits from church investments pay the salaries of the General Authorities (high-ranking leaders) who are themselves often property owners, executives, and/or well-paid professionals before accepting the church position. Meanwhile the rank-and-file members and third-world converts must work for a living. The church still inculcates mutual aid and relief societies (it is rare to find a truly destitute Mormon), but nobody today would mistake Utah for a great socialist country. In that sense it can be said that the Mormon War was eventually successful in defeating Mormonism.</p>
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<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_the_war_on_fundamentalist_mormonism">The War on Fundamentalist Mormonism</h3>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>I agree with Lum that the 19th-century Mormon economy in Utah was a barrier to Eastern capitalism, but I think Lum’s account is overly optimistic, especially his claim that the Mormon cooperatives had managed to abolish wage labour. As Leonard Arrington pointed out in his celebrated economic history of the Mormons in Utah, the Mormon principle of cooperation often meant class collaboration — Mormon capitalists and workers uniting against Eastern capitalists — rather than the class antagonism of socialist cooperatives.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_3" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_3" title="View footnote.">3</a>]</sup></p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The Mormon social experiment — which sought not the abolition of capital but the cooperation between the owning and working classes (including state-ownership and central planning of some industries), strove for economic self-sufficiency, looked to a single almost supreme prophet for guidance, believed it was restoring ancient order to a decadent society, and cultivated a strong identity as a unified people in the face of external threats — shared some features of the Fascist movements which later arose out of radical unions in Europe.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Of course the LDS Church is also built on principles which would be impossible to reconcile with anything like Fascism, especially its cosmopolitan missionary program by which the church since its inception has made friends and converts from nations and in countries all over the planet. But suppose the church stopped proselytizing: what would an insular Mormon church look like, especially if its authoritarian elements were emphasized? We don’t have to imagine. The American West is dotted by isolated fundamentalist Mormon communities which split with (or were excommunicated by) the LDS Church beginning in the first years of the 20th century and have refused to this day to integrate into the mainstream society or economy. The largest organized group of fundamentalist Mormons is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-Day_Saints">“Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints”</a> (FLDS) which is infamously characterized by authoritarian rulers, revered (or at least accepted) as prophets, who sexually abuse and economically exploit their subjects.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_4" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_4" title="View footnote.">4</a>]</sup></p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Governments have used the crimes of those leaders to punish and attempt to dissolve FLDS communes in order to integrate members into society at large as taxable worker-shoppers. A series of raids culminating in a large 1953 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Creek_raid">action against the town of Short Creek</a> (which is today the twin towns of Colorado City and Hildale) carried out by Arizona state troopers and national guardsmen resulted in the arrest of 400 Mormon men, women, and children. Some children were never reunited with their families, and the fact that most of the families were allowed to return home was only because of the immense nation-wide public outrage at the raid and the way it was carried out.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Again in 2008, acting on a false report of sexual abuse made via telephone by a non-Mormon woman in a different state, militarized police <a href="https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/texas-has-its-own-view-of-polygamists-the-texas-flds-raids-and-trials/">raided an FLDS compound in Texas</a>. The police removed 462 children under the age of 18 and placed them in protective custody. The children were kept in custody for a month until an appeals court ordered that they be returned to their families. In 2012 the state of Texas initiated legal forfeiture and seizure proceedings against the ranch, a move reminiscent of the old Edmunds–Tucker Act, and in 2014 the State took physical possession of the property.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>While fundamentalist Mormonism is not nearly as sympathetic as the Mormon society Dyer Lum knew and described, the retreat fundamentalist Mormons have made to insular authoritarianism is a direct result of the 19th-century campaign of state repression, a campaign which continues today.</p>
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<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_further_reading">Further Reading</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p><a href="/log/2011/4/18/mormon_anarchism_-_some_links/">Mormon Anarchism - Some Links</a> is a list I maintain of links to Web resources pertaining to Mormon anarchism.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Arrington, Leonard J. <em>Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-Day Saints, 1830-1900</em>. New edition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Lum, Dyer D. <a href="https://archive.org/details/socialproblemsof00lumd"><em>Social problems of today: or, the Mormon question in its economic aspects.</em></a> New York: D. D. Lum & Co, 1886.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>McCormick, John S. <a href="https://atom.lib.byu.edu/smh/6514/">“An Anarchist Defends the Mormons: The Case of Dyer D. Lum.”</a> <em>Utah Historical Quarterly</em> 44 (1976): 156-69.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Rockman, Seth. <a href="https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/forum-the-future-of-civil-war-era-studies/the-future-of-civil-war-era-studies-slavery-and-capitalism/">“The Future of Civil War Era Studies: Slavery and Capitalism.”</a> A survey of works exploring the relationship between slavery and capitalism leading up to the Civil War from the <em>Journal of the Civil War Era</em>.</p>
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<div id="footnotes">
<hr>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_1">
<a href="#_footnoteref_1">1</a>. Lum, <em>Social problems of today</em>, 87. All subsequent parenthetical page numbers refer to this work.
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_2">
<a href="#_footnoteref_2">2</a>. Dyer Lum, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=gVI2AQAAMAAJ"><em>Utah and Its People: Facts and Statistics Bearing on the "Mormon Problem"</em></a> (R.O. Ferrier, 1882), 6.
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_3">
<a href="#_footnoteref_3">3</a>. “Thus, there was cooperation between the community, the church, and private capitalists in financing the factory. This technique represented a conscious attempt to develop a manufacturing industry without the importation of capital from the East.” (317)
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_4">
<a href="#_footnoteref_4">4</a>. In 2007, Anne Wilde estimated the FLDS membership to include 8,000 people, which accounts for less than a quarter of all fundamentalist Mormons (most of whom are not affiliated with an organized group). See Anne Wilde, “Fundamentalist Mormonism: Its History, Diversity, and Stereotypes, 1886-Present,” <em>Scattering of the saints: Schism within Mormonism</em> (2007): 258-89.
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</div>An overly simplified theory of the relationship between slavery, Mormon cooperatives, and capitalism with application to some interesting events in American history.tag:americancynic.net,2014-04-24:/log/2014/4/24/loving_v_utah_and_mormonisms_embarrassing_saga_of_marriage_law/Loving v. Utah and Mormonism's Embarrassing Saga of Marital Policy2014-04-24T16:16:07Z2018-08-03T20:33:45Z<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_kitchen_v_herbert">Kitchen v. Herbert</h2>
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<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
The State’s prohibition of the Plaintiffs' right to choose a same-sex marriage partner renders their fundamental right to marry as meaningless as if the State recognized the Plaintiffs' right to bear arms but not their right to buy bullets.
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<div class="attribution">
— Judge Robert Shelby<br>
<cite>Kitchen v. Herbert</cite>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>April 10 was the 47th anniversary of the date <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia"><em>Loving v. Virginia</em></a><sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_1" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_1" title="View footnote.">1</a>]</sup> was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. <em>Loving</em> was the landmark case which found miscegenation laws (those laws which prohibited interracial marriages) to be unconstitutional. April 10 also happened to be the date the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_v._Herbert"><em>Kitchen v. Herbert</em></a>,<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_2" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_2" title="View footnote.">2</a>]</sup> the case challenging Utah’s constitutional prohibition of same-sex marriages.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Almost 66% of Utah’s voters approved <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Constitutional_Amendment_3">Amendment 3</a> in 2004. The amendment defines marriage as consisting “only of the legal union between a man and a woman,” as a preemptive measure to defend the state’s marriage statutes against constitutional challenge. On December 20, 2013, a Federal District Court ruled in <em>Kitchen</em> that the amendment violated the rights to due process and equal protection under the law as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, on a rational basis alone.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>In the conclusion of his ruling, Judge Robert Shelby found the state’s contentions in <em>Loving</em> to be “almost identical to the assertions made by the State of Utah in support of Utah’s laws prohibiting same-sex marriage.” He found those assertions to be unconvincing:</p>
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<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Anti-miscegenation laws in Virginia and elsewhere were designed to, and did, deprive a targeted minority of the full measure of human dignity and liberty by denying them the freedom to marry the partner of their choice. Utah’s Amendment 3 achieves the same result.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Rather than protecting or supporting the families of opposite-sex couples, Amendment 3 perpetuates inequality by holding that the families and relationships of same-sex couples are not now, nor ever will be, worthy of recognition. Amendment 3 does not thereby elevate the status of opposite-sex marriage; it merely demeans the dignity of same-sex couples.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p><span class="line-through">Judge Shelby’s ruling was appealed, and the parties are currently waiting on the Tenth Circuit Court in Denver to make a decision. If it is appealed again, there is a chance that the case will be selected to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court which could finally establish some national precedent on the matter.</span></p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Judge Shelby’s ruling was appealed, providing an opportunity for the Tenth Circuit Court in Denver to consider the validity of marriage bans for the first time. That court found the appellants' justifications to fail the strict scrutiny test, affirming the district court’s ruling “that Amendment 3 and similar statutory enactments do not withstand constitutional scrutiny.” In October, the Supreme Court denied without comment the writ of certiorari leaving the appellate court’s mandate in effect: same-sex marriages are valid and must be recognized in the State of Utah. (On June 26, 2015, in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obergefell_v._Hodges"><em>Obergefell v. Hodges</em></a>, the Supreme Court found it to be unconstitutional to deny marriages to same-sex couples making such marriages available and recognized throughout the union.)</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Legal analogies between interracial couples' right to marry and same-sex couples' right to marry have been made almost since the Supreme Court ruled on <em>Loving</em> in 1967. In her celebrated and comprehensive history of miscegenation law, <em>What Comes Naturally</em>, Peggy Pascoe mentioned such an analogy being dismissed by the Minnesota Supreme Court in 1971. It wasn’t until a ruling by the Hawaii Supreme Court in 1993 that courts began taking the same-sex analogy to <em>Loving</em> seriously:</p>
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<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
“After the Hawaii ruling, both the energy of the campaign to legalize same-sex marriage and the number of court cases that accompanied it grew by leaps and bounds. Over the next decade, several judges issued rulings overturning state bans, and they used the parallel to <em>Loving v. Virginia</em> to do so.” (299-300)
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>In an essay she wrote for <em>History News Network</em>, “<a href="http://hnn.us/article/4708">Why the Ugly Rhetoric Against Gay Marriage Is Familiar to this Historian of Miscegenation,</a>” Pascoe argued that in order to understand the current debate over same-sex marriage it is first necessary to understand the history of American miscegenation laws, “because both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage come to this debate, knowing or unknowingly, wielding rhetorical tools forged during the history of miscegenation law.” She also noted that, “The arguments white supremacists used to justify for miscegenation laws—​that interracial marriages were contrary to God’s will or somehow unnatural—​are echoed today by the most conservative opponents of same-sex marriage.”</p>
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<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_heteronormativity_for_time_and_all_eternity">Heteronormativity for Time and All Eternity</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>And indeed the opponents of same-sex marriage are almost invariably religious and motivated by an adherence to what they believe to be divine revelations and/or a philosophy of natural law. In the <em>Kitchen</em> appeal, a coalition of Christian churches filed a 42-page amicus brief in support of the state.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_3" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_3" title="View footnote.">3</a>]</sup> The brief represents something of an ecumenical wonder, bringing together in the battle against same-sex marriage the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Lutheran Church—​Missouri Synod.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Apparently if there is anything Catholics, Mormons, Evangelicals, Lutherans, and Southern Baptists all agree on, it is that the sexes of would-be spouses are important and should be regulated by the state.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) appears to have the strongest motivation to preserve a traditional definition of marriage in Utah. Not only because of that church’s deep ties to Utah, but also because family occupies an unusually important position in Mormon thought. Unlike other Christian sects who marry “until death do us part,” Mormon couples partake in an ordinance of “celestial marriage” in which they are sealed during a temple ceremony “for time and eternity.”</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>To Mormons, family is not merely the fundamental unit of society here on earth. It is also an everlasting institution, a cosmic matrix underlying the very purpose of life and eternal progression: we were spirit children of Heavenly Father and Mother in our pre-earth existence; we gain physical bodies, faith, and families in this, our mortal life; after physical death, our bodies and families will be raised into exalted existence, like God was in his body, at the time of the resurrection to progress evermore and perhaps begin the cycle anew.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_4" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_4" title="View footnote.">4</a>]</sup></p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>In 1995, the LDS First Presidency released a statement reaffirming the importance of the family and emphasizing that marriage is between a man and a woman (“The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan”). That statement, titled “<a href="https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation">The Family: A Proclamation to the World</a>”, is cited on page 10 of the amicus brief filed in the <em>Kitchen</em> appeal to demonstrate, strangely enough, that for Mormons “homosexuality is remote from teachings about marriage and family” in order to argue against “the suggestion that religious support for husband-wife marriage is rooted in anti-homosexual animus.”</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The Church’s interest in the state definition and regulation of marriage may be explained by a fear expressed succinctly on page 19 of the religious brief: “if the meaning of marriage is changed in concept, the cultural significance attached to marriage will also change in practice.”</p>
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</div>
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<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_freedoms_and_restrictions_in_the_history_of_mormon_marriage">Freedoms and Restrictions in the History of Mormon Marriage</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>But there was a time when the Mormons were condemned for having too liberal a view of marriage and family. In nineteenth-century Utah “celestial marriage” was a euphemism for “plural marriage,” a practice in which some Mormon men would take multiple wives. At that time, plural marriage was taught as being essential to eternal progression, just as opposite-sex marriage is proclaimed by the Church to be essential today.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In 1866 Brigham Young, the second president of the LDS Church and himself a great fan of the doctrine of plural marriage, delivered a brief defense of polygamy in which he stated, “The only men who become gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy.” In that same sermon, Young declared that if Utah was not admitted as a state to the union until it outlawed polygamy “then, we shall never be admitted.”⁠<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_5" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_5" title="View footnote.">5</a>]</sup></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Faced with increasing social pressure and ruinous repression by the federal government (particularly the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmunds%E2%80%93Tucker_Act">Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887</a>), the Church leaders' courageous defiance was set aside in favor of practicality. In 1890 Wilford Woodruff, the fourth president of the Church, after claiming to have received a revelation from Jesus Christ on the matter, issued <a href="https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/od/1?lang=eng#">`The Manifesto'</a> which ended the practice of plural marriage by the Church. Utah was admitted as the 45th U.S. state a little over five years after the manifesto was issued.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>While the LDS Church experimented with marriage freedoms in the number of wives, it also historically restricted freedoms based on race. From the presidency of Brigham Young until 1978, the Church did not ordain black men to its priesthood or allow black members to participate in temple sealing ordinances — blacks were excluded from celestial marriage and the postmortal exaltation for which it is essential.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Mormons combined contemporary justifications for slavery and apartheid, such as the theory that black skin was a divine curse marking out the descendants of Cain, with their own doctrine of premortal existence and agency to develop an especially vicious justification for racism: blacks were to be disenfranchised, and it was their own fault by their own choosing.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_6" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_6" title="View footnote.">6</a>]</sup></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The Church’s race realism, while tenuously implementable in the United States, was completely useless when the Church began proselytizing in ethnically mixed populations such as in Brazil. This practical difficulty combined with increasing political pressure since the Civil Rights Movement forced the Church to abandon its racist policies. In June 1978, the Church leadership received a revelation which removed the racial restrictions on priesthood membership and access to the temple including celestial marriage — over ten years after <em>Loving v. Virginia</em>.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_7" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_7" title="View footnote.">7</a>]</sup></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_conclusion">Conclusion</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>With their efforts to exclude same-sex couples from both celestial and mortal marriage (the 1995 Proclamation, California’s Proposition 8, Utah’s Amendment 3, etc.), the men who lead the LDS Church today seem determined to continue the Mormon tradition of teaching divine principles of marriage which it is later forced to rescind.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>If I were a Mormon, the thing that would frustrate me the most is how completely unnecessary the emphasis on heteronormative marriage is to the doctrine of celestial marriage. It would be much less painful (and more consistent with the Church’s pro-family rhetoric) to make room in the Celestial Kingdom for same-sex families than it is to kick against the goads of a changing culture. It is embarrassing for an organization lead by purported prophets, seers, and revelators to repeatedly exhibit such shortsightedness.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_references_and_notes">References and Notes</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Pascoe, Peggy. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/690508927"><em>What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America</em></a>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Tanner, Jerald, and Sandra Tanner. <a href="http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/curseofcain_contents.htm"><em>Curse of Cain?: Racism in the Mormon Church</em></a>. Salt Lake City, UT: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 2004. <a href="http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/curseofcain_contents.htm" class="bare">http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/curseofcain_contents.htm</a></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “<a href="https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng">Race and Priesthood</a>”. <a href="https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng" class="bare">https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng</a></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Young, Brigham. “<a href="http://jod.mrm.org/11/266">Delegate Hooper—Beneficial Effects of Polygamy—Final Redemption of Cain</a>”. <em>Journal of Discourses</em> 11 (1866): 266-272. <a href="http://jod.mrm.org/11/266" class="bare">http://jod.mrm.org/11/266</a></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="footnotes">
<hr>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_1">
<a href="#_footnoteref_1">1</a>. <em>Loving v. Virginia</em>, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_2">
<a href="#_footnoteref_2">2</a>. <em>Kitchen v. Herbert</em>, 961 F.Supp.2d 1181 (D. Utah 2013), _affirmed_ 755 F.3d 1193 (10th Cir. 2014); <em>stay granted</em>, 134 S.Ct. 893 (2014); <em>petition for certiorari denied</em>, No. 14-124, 2014 WL 3841263 (Oct. 6, 2014)
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_3">
<a href="#_footnoteref_3">3</a>. The brief is available in several formats at archive.org: “<a href="https://archive.org/details/Gov.uscourts.ca10.13-4078Kitchen-v.-Herbert-Doc.-01019200417">Brief if Amici Curiae United States Conference of Catholic Bishops; National Association of Evangelicals; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention; and Lutheran Church—​Missouri Synod In Support of Defendants-Appellants and Supporting Reversal, Case Nos. 13-4178, 14-5003, 14-5006, United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (February 10, 2014)</a>”
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_4">
<a href="#_footnoteref_4">4</a>. For an example of teaching on these topics, see the 1909 statement issued by the First Presidency, “<a href="https://www.lds.org/ensign/2002/02/the-origin-of-man?lang=eng">The Origin of Man</a>”, in which President Joseph F. Smith taught that “man, as a spirit, was begotten and born of heavenly parents, and reared to maturity in the eternal mansions of the Father, prior to coming upon the earth in a temporal body to undergo an experience in mortality.”
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_5">
<a href="#_footnoteref_5">5</a>. Young, “Beneficial Effects of Polygamy,” 269.
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_6">
<a href="#_footnoteref_6">6</a>. For many quotations by Mormon leaders on the curse of Cain and the premortal justification of racism, see Tanner, <em>Curse of Cain?</em>
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_7">
<a href="#_footnoteref_7">7</a>. “<a href="https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng">Race and Priesthood.</a>”
</div>
</div>A look at Utah's fight over Amendment 3 including its parallels to Loving v. Virginia and the Mormon Church's unenviable position as it once again finds itself clinging to an antiquated notion of marriage.tag:americancynic.net,2012-02-18:/log/2012/2/18/why_the_mormon_missionaries_did_not_convert_me/Biased Belief: Why the Mormon Missionaries Haven't Converted Me Yet2012-02-18T16:22:52Z2022-02-28T21:08:44Z<div class="paragraph">
<p>When a friend of mine left for Brazil to serve his two-year mission with the LDS church after graduating high school, I began meeting with pairs of missionaries at home. After almost nine years of these occasional discussions, I think I have a pretty good idea of what they believe, and why I don’t.</p>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_mormon_recap">Mormon Recap</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>First a quick recapitulation for those who aren’t familiar with Mormonism: the Latter Day Saint Movement, or “Mormonism,” got its start during the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening">Second Great Awakening</a> (1820’s) in western New York when a farm boy named <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith">Joseph Smith</a> got fed up with the infighting of the various Christian sects and decided to ask God which church was the True church. God answered by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Vision">appearing in person</a> and telling Joseph that none of the current churches had the full truth. Eventually God used Joseph as a latter-day prophet to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_(Latter_Day_Saints)">restore</a> the full gospel to Earth:</p>
</div>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p>He was shown the location of an ancient American record, and given the ability to translate it to English as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Mormon"><em>Book of Mormon</em></a>. (Mormon being the name of the ancient historian who compiled the book, written on metal plates, from the records available to him. It was Mormon’s son, Moroni, who hid the plates and later appeared to Joseph as an angel and told him where to find them buried in a hillside in New York.)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>He was <a href="http://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/js-h/1.69-72?lang=eng#68">visited by John the Baptist</a>, and later by other New Testement personages, which conferred to him the authority of previously lost <a href="http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Priesthood">priesthoods</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>He organized the church, founded cities, and introduced some of the unique theological concepts associated with Mormonism: that God has <a href="http://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/130.22?lang=eng#21">a physical body</a>, that <a href="http://www.lds.org/ensign/1996/11/the-eternal-family?lang=eng">families are eternal</a>, and that, for 50 years during the late 19th century, some families were better off with one husband and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormonism_and_polygamy">several wives</a>, etc.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Today the largest organization in the Latter Day Saint tradition is the <a href="http://www.lds.org/?lang=eng">Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints</a> based in Salt Lake City, Utah. That church has an impressive missionary program, sending out pairs of young missionaries to cities all over the world to teach the doctrines of the church and seek converts. It is with these missionaries that I’ve been meeting.</p>
</div>
<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_the_one_essential_claim_of_mormonism">The one essential claim of Mormonism</h3>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>There is plenty to talk about, from church history to theology. Most missionaries are happy to discuss their claims both rationally and empirically (from archeology to textual criticism). But, ultimately, Mormonism can be distilled to one truth-claim: that the priesthood authority was restored by God through Joseph Smith. This is what the church <em>is</em>; the line of prophets established by God is once again on Earth, and this authority alone holds the keys necessary for humans to reach their intended destiny. And there is but one way to know the truth of that claim: subjectively, by the help of the holy spirit, you must recognize the truth in your own mind and heart.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>As such, the modus operandi of missionaries is not to convince investigators that the church is true in order to lead them to accept its doctrines; rather it is to present the doctrines (their teaching on families or the existence of the <em>Book of Mormon</em>, for example) as reasons why the church could be true.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_the_prophet_complex_theory_of_joseph_smith">The Prophet Complex Theory of Joseph Smith</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>My theory is that Joseph Smith was motivated by what I call the Prophet Complex. Like most of us, he would sometimes get excited about his ideas: when he had a moment of insight or a personal breakthrough in harmonizing contradictory ideas he had been struggling with or when he discovered an explanation or object he found elegant or beautiful. Unlike most of us, he interpreted his feelings, the stirrings in his chest, not as mere excitement but as divine validation of his ideas. Few things induce as much excitement within a person as romantic attraction or in discovering what appears to be a metaphysical or scientific truth about the universe.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>This theory easily leads to a “pious fraud” theory of why Joseph Smith would pass his own ideas off as divine revelations, and, as I see it, successfully accounts for several historical facts about Smith:</p>
</div>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p>As a teen he made a living as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrying">scryer</a>: he convinced himself, or at least his employers, that by gazing into seer stones he could divine the location of hidden treasures.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>He was devoted to his wife, Emma, until his death. Emma’s father refused to sanction the marriage, so she and Joseph eloped. According to at least <a href="http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=46">one account</a>, not until Joseph married Emma, and brought her with him, was he allowed to finally retrieve the golden plates from which he translated the <em>Book of Mormon</em>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Despite his devotion to Emma, he took several other wives and introduced polygamy as an acceptable family structure among the saints.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>He believed he was a prophet of God.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>We see a similar epistemological method being taught by the missionaries today.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_mormon_epistemology_burning_bosoms_and_confirmation_bias">Mormon Epistemology: Burning Bosoms and Confirmation Bias</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Early in my first discussions with the missionaries, they presented <a href="http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/moro/10.3-5?lang=eng">Moroni’s promise</a>, found in the last chapter of the <em>Book of Mormon</em>, to me:</p>
</div>
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
</blockquote>
<div class="attribution">
— Moroni 10
</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>So if you do manage to overcome the bootstrap problem of “having faith in Christ” in order to find out if His church is true, how does the power of the holy ghost manifest that truth? One oft-quoted Mormon scripture is a revelation given to Oliver Cowdery after his attempt at translating the <em>Book of Mormon</em> plates:</p>
</div>
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.
</blockquote>
<div class="attribution">
— <a href="http://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/9.8?lang=eng#8">Doctrine & Covenants 9:8</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>When I would ask the missionaries what the feeling was like when they finally had the truth manifested within them, most of them explained that it wasn’t a single experience but a conspiracy of feelings, thoughts, and events which lead them to their divine knowledge. The overarching theme was that the more I would pray for specific answers, the more I would experiment and invest myself in the teachings, then the more likely I would be to “feel that it is right”.</p>
</div>
<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_the_experiment_alma_32">The Experiment - Alma 32</h3>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The one chapter of the <em>Book of Mormon</em> I was asked by my missionaries to read the most often was <a href="http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/32?lang=eng">Alma 32</a>. Part of this chapter is a sermon by Alma, using a metaphor of a seed, on how one can cultivate faith and belief. It is an excellent example of Mormon epistemology and can even be read as Joseph Smith’s own apology for his revelations. I’ll quote the bulk of it beginning at verse 27 adding emphasis to important bits I’ll discuss below:</p>
</div>
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, <strong>even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe</strong> in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, <strong>if it be a true seed, or a good seed</strong>, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, <strong>it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions</strong>, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>[…​]</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>But behold, as the seed swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, then you must needs say that the seed is good; for behold it swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow. And now, behold, will not this strengthen your faith? Yea, it will strengthen your faith: for ye will say I know that this is a good seed; for behold it sprouteth and beginneth to grow.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>And now, behold, are ye sure that this is a good seed? I say unto you, Yea; for every seed bringeth forth unto its own alikeness.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Therefore, if a seed groweth it is good, but if it groweth not, behold it is not good, therefore it is cast away.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p><strong>And now, behold, because ye have tried the experiment, and planted the seed, and it swelleth and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, ye must needs know that the seed is good.</strong></p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="attribution">
— Alma
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_confirmation_bias">Confirmation Bias</h4>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Alma suggests an experiment: believe, or at least <em>desire</em> to believe, something is true. If it turns out to be good, then you know it is true and worth believing; otherwise forget it. This is an approach to knowledge that is exceedingly prone to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias">confirmation bias</a>: the tendency to favor information that confirms preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_observer_expectancy_effect">Observer-Expectancy Effect</h4>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The missionaries would often use this scripture to ask me to conduct various ‘experiments’ to help me recognize the manifestations of the holy spirit. Worse, they would often use methods which introduced further bias. For example they would ask me to pray by asking God if the <em>Book of Mormon</em> was true. They would then bear testimony that they <em>know</em> the <em>Book of Mormon</em> is true and they are sure if I’m sincere then I will come to know as well. At our next meeting they would ask me what I felt when I was reading and praying, especially did I feel good or peaceful (as if the only way I would feel peaceful while reading is if the holy spirit were speaking to me). That technique, suggesting what an investigator will feel when they pray, is prone to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer-expectancy_effect">observer-expectancy effect</a> in which the missionaries' cognitive bias affects the investigator’s. It is an attempt to avoid this bias that many courts do not allow leading questions during direct examination.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_sunk_costs">Sunk Costs</h4>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Other experiments included changes to my lifestyle (praying everyday and attending church service and events). Whenever I didn’t receive a testimony of the truth of the church, the solution was to suggest more ways I could become invested in the church. One sister missionary, in all sincerity, suggested I be baptized into the church because she thought that would help me gain a testimony. I was reminded of the part of <em>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</em> when Tom is trying to convince Jim to tame a rattlesnake: “Blame it, can’t you TRY? I only WANT you to try — you needn’t keep it up if it don’t work.”</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The technique of asking investigators to spend more of their time ‘experimenting’ is prone to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_escalation">escalation of commitment</a>: the investigator has so much invested in the truth of the church that they will tend to believe it is true without sufficient reason.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_falsifiability_and_the_prophet_complex">Falsifiability and the Prophet Complex</h4>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In any case neither Moroni’s promise nor the experiment of the seed are useful in determining the truth of the church. Moroni’s promise presupposes the truth: either the investigator has it confirmed by the holy spirit, or they didn’t pray sincerely (or they just haven’t waited or invested enough yet). Alma’s experiment doesn’t test for truth, it tests whether an idea is good or not.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Note that early in the passage I quoted above Alma equates “true seed” with “good seed”. From then on he only discusses what is “good”. He even uses the metaphor of a growing plant to explain the physical feeling of swelling emotions which occur when an idea is good. This is the prophet complex! Alma 32 contains insight into the internal justifications of a pious fraud. It seems likely to me that in Joseph Smith’s mind if an idea <em>felt</em> good enough after consideration, then it also passed the test of truthfulness. Indeed many members of the LDS church, the so-called <a href="http://newordermormon.org/">Cultural Mormons</a>, are members precisely because they believe the church is good though not necessarily true. While interesting, it is not a path to knowledge I would take for myself and I do not consider Mormonism to be on firm epistemological ground.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_conclusion">Conclusion</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Of course none of my observations preclude the possibility of personal revelation, and it is certainly possible that the missionaries I’ve talked to believe because they have direct and irrefutable knowledge from God that Joseph Smith was a prophet, that the <em>Book of Mormon</em> is an ancient record, and that the church’s priesthood is based on divine authority. If that’s the case, outside of me having my own mystical experience, there is no good way for me to confirm their claims. I remain unconvinced.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>Where I present my prophet complex theory of Joseph Smith's epistemology and criticize the methods of LDS missionaries on the same basis.