Not Blind Conformity

Lest anyone think I’m a Frank Burns, who says and believe idiot things like this:

Unless we each conform, unless we obey orders, unless we follow our leaders blindly, there is no possible way we can remain free.

I offer the following:

Yes, I did say in our church we believe in being subject to kings; that we pray for our leaders. But we also stand up against leaders who are making incorrect choices.

The church has issued statements on immigration that emphasize keeping families intact; avoiding policies that target mass expulsions based on race, culture, or religion; and treating others withkindness, no matter their immigration status.

In other words, we assert our right to be at the table when topics of justice and morality are being discussed, whether that table is religious or secular in nature.

That means if we see a leader taking the nation down the wrong path, or see a law that to us is morally unjust, we will let our voice be heard and we will combat that leader and that unjust law, without resorting to violence. To do otherwise would sell our souls for that which has no worth.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a history of being ill-treated by government, at one point in its history even leaving the United States to avoid persecution which involved mob violence, destruction of property, and an order issued by then Governor of Missouri Lilburn W. Boggs that Mormons could be exterminated in that state “on sight” without risk of persecution. We have no desire to see others placed in similar predicaments, and would fight against any government, local or federal, which would seek to enact such laws.

Besides that – I’ve got a streak of Dutch Stubborn in me a mile wide. My father saw Nazi Germany invade the Netherlands during World War II, and has always cautioned us about following anyone blindly.

Flirting with the ‘Mormon’ Label

Part of me is almost ashamed to admit this: I’m two-thirds of my way to having three pieces ready to submit to a Mormon-themed literary contest.

Why the shame?

Well, read any Mormon lit lately?

So it’s not the label. Maybe it’s not the label. I’m treading on eggs here. I guess some of it is the subject matter. Poetry is fun and all, but it’s a literary dead end. Close your eyes and spit and you’ll soil a Mormon poet, albeit probably not a very good one. I fit in that category, Mormon poems or not.

Novelists don’t tend to fare that much better. But that’s what I’m most interested in, so that’s where I’m going.

Two entries so far for Mormon Artist’s Mormon Lit Blitz. I believe my writing to be up to par with the writing that’s winning the contests. But it’s the genre, the subject matter, the approach – not the writing itself – that sinks or swims you in this business, Mormon lit or not. But this is a niche way, I suppose, to get on the radar, so I’m going to try it.

So, entries here and on my writing blog where you can read even more of my banalities, soon.

Wimps

The Deseret News has no sense of humor.

And also, it appears, the need for better copy editing.

They've started a series of articles on BYU-Idaho and, in their first installation, wrote "Rick's College" twice in their article. A minor flub, but one that should not have been missed in either the writing or editing process, since this is a common mistake made by many when Ricks College bore that name and anyone associated with a church-associated publication like the Deseret News should have known this.

I put in a slightly snarky comment, which I will produce here for all who care to read it:

Who is Rick, and why does he have a college?

A common question asked whenever anyone in this neck of the woods wanted to point out that it was Ricks College, not Rick's College.

I got the following reply from the Deseret News editorial team:

Dear Brian Davidson,
Thank you for commenting on On the frontier: How BYU-Idaho is pushing the boundaries of higher education on DeseretNews.com.
Unfortunately, your comment was not approved for one or more of the following reasons:

   * Comment included name-calling, epithets, racial slurs or personal attacks.
   * Comment contained obscenity, vulgarity and/or profanity (including symbol-replaced words).
   * Comment contained over-use of punctuation (e.g. !!!, ???), ALL CAPS SHOUTING and/or was considered incoherent.
   * Comment included a Link to another website.
   * Comment was considered commercial promotion.
   * Comment was intended to provoke or inappropriately addressed other readers by name.

We would invite you to edit and resubmit your comment using the following guidelines:

   * Comments should be thoughtful and helpful to your fellow readers with additional insight or counterpoints to the article
   * Avoid personal attacks and other inappropriate responses to fellow readers.
   * Treat other readers as you would if you were speaking to them from a microphone, looking them in the eyes, then passing the microphone cordially to the next contributor.

If you would like to revise the following comment to comply with DeseretNews.com policy you may resubmit it by logging in and commenting directly from the story again.
********************
Who is Rick, and why does he have a college?
********************
If you have further questions about comment moderation, please visit our Comments FAQ Page http://www.deseretnews.com/site/comments.
Regards,
Deseret News Editorial Team
This email was automatically generated by DeseretNews.com. Please do not reply. To unsubscribe from further comment notifications, click here.

Bunch of wimps.

Sure, they went and edited the story to expunge the "Rick's College" mentions -- but the should have said that in the reply to my comment, rather than suggesting in any way that it was uncalled for, as this email does. I'm not upset they didn't post my comment, and I'm glad they fixed the error. But anyone doing social media these days ought to know that reaching out in a positive way to someone who points out an error -- even a tiny one like this -- is going to be better off than someone who dismisses a poster like they're swatting a fly.

Even better was that earlier I got this message from the same editorial team, or so it seems:

Dear Brian Davidson,
Thank you for commenting on On the frontier: How BYU-Idaho is pushing the boundaries of higher education on DeseretNews.com.

This message is to inform you that your comment on On the frontier: How BYU-Idaho is pushing the boundaries of higher education was approved. Thank you for your participation in keeping our dialogue civil and enlightening. We hope you'll continue to engage in the online conversations on DeseretNews.com and look forward to seeing more from you in the future.

Regards,
Deseret News Editorial Team
This email was automatically generated by DeseretNews.com. Please do not reply. To unsubscribe from further comment notifications, click here.

Can't seem to make up their mind?

I know why it happened -- they fixed the error then realized, "Hey, nobody's going to understand this comment now that w'eve fixed our boo-boo. Better delete the comment, too."

Oops. That's two errors now, Deseret News.

Ooh, A Ruckus

Rumor has it that Max Spatig, who is in a spat with the Madison County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over the discovery of hazardous chemicals on his Madison County property, is taking his message to the masses.

Or at least is trying to. Or threatening to. Nevertheless, local representatives of the LDS Church have a plan in place. Spatig, the rumor says, wants to target the open format of the LDS Church's Fast Sunday -- the first Sunday of the month in which, for the first hour of church, anyone in the congregation may bear their testimonies or otherwise hold forth at the microphone -- to preach against the evils of the MCSO and EPA. Instructions, the rumor says, for local church leaders
if this were to happen would be to immediately cancel church for the day and send everyone home.

Cheekily, I kinda hope this happens.

Weirdness is often a part of LDS Fast Sundays. I've heard it used to issue calls for repentance by folks willing to use names of church members they feel have sinned, by folks who want colognes and perfumes banned from church buildings, and other such ruckus-rousing behavior. Most of the time, Fast Sundays are good Experiences, with people sharing their love of Christ, their love of the prophets, their love for their fellow beings and such. Sometimes, however it's a ruckus. Mormons are, above anything else, intensely human human beings, with all the good and bad, ego and humility, that entails.

So if Spatig shows up and truncates our traditional three-hour church block, I won't complain. I am, in fact, sorely tempted to bring the video camera next Fast Sunday, just in case. In fact, I'd feel kind a bad for folks who have Sacrament Meeting last and thus, with a Spatig sighting, wouldn't get the church truncation benefits of folks, like us, who have it first in the three-hour block.

I should go on record here saying that while Spatig deserves to be heard, hijacking a church meeting isn't the best way to go about it. It won't help his cause -- although there is enough anti-government sentiment in some Mormon circles to make this approach logical. I don't support his storage of chemicals on his property, in the open, in the weather. If he wants to keep them, that's fine. But warehouse them and store them in a fashion that if, heaven forbid there is a leak or spill, it's properly contained. And if you're upset with the tactics of the local Constabulatory or the feds, take it up in the papers and in the courts. Taking it into the court of public opinion directly to the masses is only going to accomplish one thing: A one-week vacation from church.

Arnold Friberg, 1913-2010

Part of me has always thought that Arnold Friberg’s famed Book of Mormon paintings were included as part of the golden plates compiled by Mormon and buried by his son Moroni.

The painting of Abinadi confronting King Noah left a deep impression on me. Even now, whenever I read that story, even without the picture in sight, I see Noah clad in his purpleness, perched on that throne, with those weird, pointy shoes on his impossibly small feet. Abinadi seems to glow, seems not to be a part of the scene around him. And I’ve always wondered which of the bearded fellows listening in the background is Alma, the doubter, ready to disbelieve Noah and believe the ragged man in chains before them.

Those in the Mormon Belt, of course, will have heard that Friberg died today at age 97, following hip-replacement surgery.

There’s a little apocrypha about Friberg circulating in some circles in Idaho – that at the time he painted his famous Book of Mormon pictures, he wasn’t a member of the church but converted as he read the book in order to understand what he was painting. Not so. Wikipedia tells me he was a child of record, baptized at 8 after his parents joined the church the year previous.

And here's something to think about: Mr. Friberg, maybe, is meeting with or has already met the subjects of his paintings. What a trip that would be. Will King Noah be upset, say, hey man, I'm not that chubby, or, you know, I never wore purple. And will Abinadi really be kind of a real scrawny guy, not the buffed out dude in the painting. I don't know. But that would certainly be one of those etheral meetings I'd like to be in on.

Not apocryphal: He did pre-visualization work for Cecil B. deMille’s “The Ten Commandments" and helped design costumes and other artwork for the film and, as a consequence, was nominated for an Academy Award. deMille apparently made a gift of Moses’ costume to Friberg. I’d like to see that.

Who Reads A Mormon Novel?

So, there’s some hand-wringing going on at the Deseret News, at Dialogue: A Journal for Mormon Thought, and now, thanks to Dialogue, it’s spilling over to Slate.com, over the absence of a “Mormon” novel.

Mormon novelist Barry Udall seems to suggest, as Slate.com reports, that it’s fear that is stopping the Mormon novel:

We have always been threatened by anything that doesn’t fit squarely within our system of belief. Good art will always be complex, contradictory, and will resist easy judgment – all things that would make any good Mormon nervous.

Really? And as a life-long Mormon, can’t I say that Mormonism itself is complex, contradictory, and resistant to easy judgment? I can and will, because it’s true.

Slate says Deseret News columnist Jerry Earl Johnston, says Mormons “are too uncomfortable with ambiguity and imperfection” to write a great novel.

To that I say: What? Any society that can struggle through the Isaiah Chapters in Second Nephi, the Allegory of the Olive Tree in Jacob and other ponderous writings of Nephi take ambiguity in stride.

So they’re missing the mark in pondering the question.

Ironically, it’s from kinda someone Udall and Johnston are looking for that I think the truth comes out. Paul Bailey, who wrote the wonderful book “Polygamy was Better than Monotony,” has this to say:

The rents and patches are there because of me, my flounderings, and my continued and unorthodox toilings. I have found that whenever I too snugly tighten my cloak, it becomes a strait-jacket. . . . By wearing the cloak a bit loose, by opening it to the wind and the storms, I have frayed its edges, and have weather-spotted it a little more than it should be. But it is a good cloak, and I am proud of it.

To that, I respond:

Yes, he admits, he’s gone astray. But being the big-minded cultural Mormon he is, his astrayness is OK because it makes his cultural Mormonism that much better. While I myself have been known to wear my cloak a bit loose as well, I’m not foolish enough to think that keeping core aspects as tight as I can bear. That tightness, that unwillingness to bend – which his beloved Grandfather Forbes displayed as he first served jail time for being in a polygamous relationship, then fled to Colorado and New Mexico to avoid capture by federal authorities – might be the true store of the pugnaciousness that Bailey claims is missing from the church today. But that’s just me.

But, more importantly, I’m drawn to the words of Sydney Smith, who, in reviewing a written history of the United States in 1820, had this to say:

In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? Or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to American physicians or surgeons? What new substances have their chemists discovered? Or what old ones have they advanced? What new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans? Who drinks out of American glasses? Or eats from American plates? Or wears American coats or gowns? or sleeps in American blankets? Finally, under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy and sell and torture?

Though what he says is too often taken as a slam against everything American, what Smith was trying to point out is that is it really important that books – or any other article or item – be labeled as “American,” or “Mormon,” or anything else.

The screaming desire for a great Mormon author is nothing more than a desire to enter into the world of popularity contests. There are plenty of mediocre authors out there – Mormon and not – who haven’t yet been identified by the intellisnobstia as “great” for good reason: They’re not great. Chaim Potok writes Jewish novels. I’ve read them. Yes, the characters are Jewish. But does that make him a Jewish author? Do Mormons have to write about Mormons and Mormonism to be considered Mormon authors?

I also look at whom I consider to be great authors and I have to wonder: Do I care if they’re Mormons, Presbyterians, Atheists or whatever? Not really. I like them for what they write. Sinclair Lewis. C.S. Lewis. John Steinbeck. Richard Rhodes. And many others.

"Great" novels are great because they're a rarity. Some writers are able to produce a few great novels, but they're rarer still. Only Steinbeck could have written "The Grapes of Wrath." Only Lewis could have written
"Babbitt." When we encounter a great novel, we do as did a reviewer for Richard Adams' "Watership Down":

I announce, with trembling pleasure, the appearance of a great novel.

At least that's what I do. I don't immediately take out my Great Author Bingo Chart and cross off another X.

Polygamy Was Better than Monotony

In writing Polygamy Was Better than Monotony, Paul Dayton Bailey presents a delightful remembrance of living on the ragged edge of polygamous Utah – but also presents a conundrum as he condemns the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for being “vital, pugnacious, earth-shaking,” and a “unique breed” and at the same time condemning the church and its members for being too strait laced and too inflexible to those who don’t “toe the line.”


Still, it’s refreshing to read a book written by a lapsed Mormon that avoids the two cliché-ridden pitfalls that typically strike at those attempting to write about the faith: The strait-laced Molly Mormon approach that, as he points out, avoids the controversy and only writes that which is edifying; and the hey I used to be a Mormon and boy am I ever glad to have escaped that horrible, mind-bending cult approach that shows more venom than is absolutely necessary. Also refreshing is that bailey has the truth in him enough to blame his and his family's foibles more on their own behavior than on the church -- a favorite four-lane highway of the typical jack Mormon writer.

Part of me wonders, however, if Bailey might be more pleased with the church of today. He died in 1987 during the tenure of Ezra Taft Benson as president of the church. He was pugnacious in his day, but likely not as pugnacious as Bailey would have had him be. Today’s leaders are probably also not as pugnacious, but there is increased tolerance among the “authorities” for unorthodoxy, especially when it comes to exposing such things as the Mountain Meadows Massacre and other sell-savory aspects of early Mormon history.

Here’s what Bailey writes:

The Church – no longer poor and persecuted – is run by men whose years are far past the three-score-and-ten. Instead of being a vital, pugnacious, earth-shaking movement – it seems not to be interested in only one thing – to be well thought of. So, don’t mention polygamy; ignore Mountains Meadows, Danites, and militarism. If you are a Mormon writer – do it according to approved pattern – keep your mouth shut on the controversial isaues – pay close attention to keeping one’s mortal estate.

I am proud of my Mormon heritage. I love it with inordinate passion. My grandparents were tremendous characters. They willingly went to prison for their beliefs. Instead of courting Gentiles, and groveling for their approval, they had guts and conviction enough to spit in their eyes, and to deliver them forthwith to the buffetings of Satan. They know they were a peculiar and special breed; that they were chosen before the world was formed.

I have to wonder, though, would Bailey’s jack Mormonism (as his affiliation with the church must be described) would be augmented by the church today, as its pugnaciousness continues into areas that perhaps he might not approve. (He’s already critical of a church that granted a divorce between his mother and father, and erroneously assumes that this divorce makes his father risk hellfire.) Surely he’d have something to say about the pugnaciousness of the church in taking the stand it has on California’s Proposition 8, though he might have grudging admiration for how the church and church members have weathered the storm of hatred that emerged after that proposition, banning gay marriage, was approved.

As I read the book, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that Bailey, while not antagonistic towards Mormon culture, is only nonantagonistic because of his immersion in that culture, while avoiding immersion in the gospel. In other words, he’s a Mormon by culture, not by faith. Read this:

The rents and patches are there because of me, my flounderings, and my continued and unorthodox toilings. I have found that whenever I too snugly tighten my cloak, it becomes a strait-jacket. . . . By wearing the cloak a bit loose, by opening it to the wind and the storms, I have frayed its edges, and have weather-spotted it a little more than it should be. But it is a good cloak, and I am proud of it.

Yes, he admits, he’s gone astray. But being the big-minded cultural Mormon he is, his astrayness is OK because it makes his cultural Mormonism that much better. While I myself have been known to wear my cloak a bit loose as well, I’m not foolish enough to think that keeping core aspects as tight as I can bear. That tightness, that unwillingness to bend – which his beloved Grandfather Forbes displayed as he first served jail time for being in a polygamous relationship, then fled to Colorado and New Mexico to avoid capture by federal authorities – might be the true store of the pugnaciousness that Bailey claims is missing from the church today. But that’s just me.

I heartily recommend the book, however. It is probably the most honest treatment of polygamy, and life in polygamous families, that I’ve ever read. It’s also an admirable human portrait of a man – his father, Eli Bailey – living his religion despite his faults (he was married in the Salt Lake Temple but parked his cigarette on a temple stone for retrieval after the ceremony).

It's also odd to see the Lincoln Sugar Factory play a small part in a novel. I attended elementary school next to the factory where Bailey's father worked for a time as a foreman -- the school was called Stinkin' Lincoln because of its proximity to the factory and for the belching smoke that rose out of its single brick smokestack on most days.