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Apologia Report 13:40
November 12, 2008
Subject: The ongoing legacy of Mormon polygamy
In this issue:
MORMONISM - LDS journalist wrestles with implications of polygamy after FLDS raid in Texas
OCCULTISM - popular understanding more fiction than fact?
WORD-FAITH MOVEMENT - Wall Street Journal ironically fails to understand the "prosperity gospel"
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MORMONISM
"A Mainstream Mormon's Test of Faith" by Jesse Hyde -- a devout LDS journalist reviews the April 3, 2008 polygamist raid and subsequent developments regarding the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) at the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas.
After explaining the differences between the FLDS and the main body of Mormons, Hyde reflects on how attitudes toward his religion have changed. "Once, the governor of Missouri issued an extermination order to rid his state of its Mormon population. ...
"Now Mormons have led companies like eBay and Black & Decker and Marriott. They sit on powerful senate committees and teach in Ivy League schools. As The New York Times recently noted, it's been a breathtaking journey from the radical fringes to the conservative center. ...
"[A]s the story develops, I begin to feel a kinship with these polygamists. ...
"I see parallels between their plight and the persecution early Mormons experienced. ... While most of my Mormon friends want to distance themselves from the FLDS, I feel drawn to their story."
The FLDS "arrived in Texas five years earlier....
"Before long, big log cabins were going up, followed by a cement plant, a grain silo and a medical clinic. In March 2004, an anti-polygamy activist named Flora Jessop traveled to Eldorado to hold a press conference that attracted about 50 reporters, some coming from as far away as Salt Lake City. Raised in the sect, she said she had 28 brothers and sisters who still lived in the FLDS stronghold along the Utah/Arizona border. Since her escape, she had dedicated her life to exposing the evils of the sect, which had broken from the mainstream Mormon church inÊ1930. ...
"When [Utah and Arizona] began seizing FLDS property and assets to pay for delinquent taxes, Jeffs sent some of his most loyal followers to Texas to build a new community. ...
"[L]ast March ... the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the umbrella for Child Protective Services, received a call alleging that a 16-year-old girl named Sarah was being physically and sexually abused at the ranch.
"Law enforcement never did find Sarah, but they did trace the phone calls to 33-year-old Rozita Swinton, a Colorado woman who had a history of making false reports. It seemed almost certain that the call, which resulted in the seizure of 468Êchildren and the largest child custody case in U.S. history, was a hoax. ...
"I thought times had changed, but if the campaign of Mitt Romney taught Mormons anything, it's that a wide gulf remains between the way we think we're perceived and public opinion. ...
"For most of my life, I knew little about the practice in my church's early years. ...
"My interest was piqued when I started reading Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven [1], a best-seller about the history of violence and polygamy in the Mormon church that everyone in school was talking about. ...
"In the ensuing years, my questions about polygamy would morph into doubts about the existence of God, and I began to wonder if I could continue being a Mormon. To leave the church would fracture my relationships with my wife, my family and many of my closest friends, all of whom held an unquestioning faith.
"I decided to tolerate my doubts and eventually made peace with them. Sure, there were things about my church's history I didn't understand, but when it came to polygamy, the only difference between Mormonism and other major faiths was time: Muslims, Jews and Christians all accepted as prophets men who had once practiced polygamy. ...
"Now, as I drive to Eldorado, I realize that my doubts about polygamy never really went away. I had simply ignored them.
"On the morning of May 19, I pull into San Angelo. More than a month has passed since District Judge Barbara Walther allowed the state to remove on an emergency basis 468 FLDS children from the YFZ Ranch and placed them in foster care. This morning, at the Tom Green County Courthouse, dozens of lawyers from around the state - attorneys ad litem appointed by the court to represent the children - will argue in a temporary custody hearing that the judge acted outside the scope of law and that the children should be returned to their parents. ...
"Child Protective Services reported to the press that of the 53 teenage girls found at the ranch, 31 were pregnant or had children as teenagers, seemingly irrefutable proof that teens were marrying at a young age in a community that strictly forbids contact between opposite sexes before marriage. It was hard to argue that young girls weren't being groomed for a life of indentured servitude and that young men weren't being indoctrinated to become sexual predators. ...
"In court, it becomes clear that the state's case is on shaky ground. One attorney after another hammers CPS for taking so many children into custody without any evidence of sexual or physical abuse. There may have been a few bad apples on the ranch, but that didn't justify the mass seizure, lawyers say. Instead, the state should have looked at each child on a case-by-case basis. ...
"Although most FLDS members refuse to be interviewed, Dan Jessop speaks to me late in the afternoon outside one of the courtrooms. ...
"As we talk, I can't help but think of how easily I could be standing in his place. ...
"Sitting in the courthouse, talking to their lawyers and to a few of the polygamists themselves, I find much to respect. ...
"But I also hear much that troubles me: Warren Jeff's practice of kicking dissenters out of the sect and reassigning their wives and children to other men. The dozens of boys Jeffs had booted out under the pretense of sinful behavior who continued to turn up on the streets of Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, sometimes as prostitutes. ...
"Although Judge Walther decides that the children should remain in the state's custody, two days after I leave Eldorado, the 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin rules in favor of FLDS members, and a week later, the Texas Supreme Court affirms the ruling. ...
"As the story of the FLDS fades from the public's fascination, I continue to follow its legal twists and turns. In June, the state begins dismissing child custody cases, and by October they have dropped all but 72. Only one child, a 14-year-old girl, remains in foster care, and that is only because her mother has refused to answer questions from CPS investigators.
"The FLDS have made their own concessions. Also in June, the church releases a statement asserting that all marriages within the sect are consensual and that from now on, the church will not 'preside over the marriage of any woman under the age of legal consent in the jurisdiction in which the marriage takes place.' The church will counsel families that it won't request or consent to any underage marriage.
"Nevertheless, the state continues to pursue criminal charges against men at the YFZ Ranch. In late September, a grand jury in Eldorado indicted six men - five on one felony account each for sexual assault, four on bigamy charges and one for failing to report child abuse. ...
"I still have my doubts, and realize my beliefs might seem entirely foolish and a bit whimsical to my secular friends, but they are my beliefs, borne of my history, experience and spirituality." Houston Press, Oct 30 '08. <www.tinyurl.com/5acn4d>
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OCCULTISM
"Voodoo dolls, zombies and France's president" by Heather Whipps -- reports that "A controversial voodoo doll is proving to be quite the pain in the side of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
"The doll, which features Sarkozy's likeness and is being sold in some French stores, comes with a set of pins and an instruction manual on how to inflict voodoo curses on him.
"Sarzoky is now suing the producer of the doll, which he says is an affront to his reputation and a misuse of his personal image.
It is unlikely that the publisher or Sarkozy have thought much about voodoo's ancient roots during the doll fiasco, but the practice is in fact just one insignificant part of a complex belief system that makes up the mysterious religion, which is still practiced in many parts of Africa, Haiti, Jamaica and Louisiana, among others.
"Vodoun, as the official religion is called by most of its practitioners, has little to do with the black magic, as its detractors suggest. ...
"In actuality, voodoo dolls were unheard of or very rare in Africa and Haiti, and had only a small surge in popularity when voodoo migrated from Haiti to New Orleans in the early 1900s. Even then, the dolls were often used for benevolent purposes, such as helping an infertile couple conceive. The concept of pinpricking-for-pain style voodoo dolls is mostly a product of Hollywood." LiveScience.com, Oct 24 '08, <www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27364410>
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WORD-FAITH MOVEMENT
"Pennies From Heaven" by Peter L. Berger -- in this sympathetic secular appraisal that is blind to spiritual dangers of the movement, Berger notes that "to poor people, who are a majority of its adherents, ... the 'prosperity gospel,' [is] a version of Christianity asserting that material benefits will come to those who have faith, live a morally upright life and, not so incidentally, give money to the church. Broadly speaking, this is what Max Weber called the Protestant Ethic, but with much less emphasis on self-denial and more on hard work, planning for the future, family loyalty and educating one's children.
"The prosperity gospel probably originated among the poorer elements of the evangelical community in America. It is now a global phenomenon, especially among the rapidly spreading Pentecostal churches in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
"Virtually all outside commentary on the prosperity gospel, both by theologians and by people in the lay media, has been very negative, holding that it is a distortion of Christianity pushed by rogue preachers who enrich themselves by exploiting the poor. There is some validity to these criticisms. It is certainly true that Christianity is not a recipe for acquiring wealth. But in that respect the prosperity gospel - usually seen as being on the Christian right - closely resembles the 'liberation theology' of the Christian left, except that the latter's enrichment program is collective rather than individual. Liberation theology defined Christianity as essentially being a struggle of poor oppressed people against capitalism and imperialism. And while it is obvious that some preachers of the prosperity gospel are simply motivated by self-interest, one must suppose that, given human nature, some left-leaning clergy are too. ...
"A few months ago, I visited a Pentecostal megachurch in a suburb of Johannesburg. ... There were two simple but powerful messages. One, 'God does not want you to be poor!' And, two, 'You can do something about it!' ...
"As I left the church, I asked myself: Would I really want to quarrel with these messages? ...
"Weber believed that the economic consequences of Protestantism were unintentional. The prosperity gospel intends these consequences - material betterment for individuals, economic growth in the aggregate. It promises poor people that these goals are attainable. It is a promise likely to be kept. It seems to me that this empirical reality must be taken into account in any evaluation of the prosperity gospel - even by theologians and moral philosophers." Wall Street Journal, Oct 24 '08. <online.wsj.com/article/SB122479455028963963.html>
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Sources, Monographs:
1 - Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, by Jon Krakauer (Doubleday, 2003, hardcover, 400 pages, ISBN 0-3855-0951-0)
<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385509510/apologiareport>
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