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I’ve been chipping away at Kathleen Flake’s “The Politics of American Religious Identity” about the Smoot hearings. From the section about the delegation that traveled to Vermont to erect and dedicate the Joseph Smith memorial monument: Quote:…
Commemoration is inevitably a function of selective memory and entails the equally important task of forgetting.…People develop a shared identity by identifying, exploring, and agreeing on memories…In the course of taking a picture or creating an album they decide what they want to remember and how they want to remember it. In 1905 the Latter-day Saints were about to turn the American landscape into their scrapbook. During Joseph F. Smith’s administration, the church began to recover and reconstruct the sites of its early history in New York, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa. ….the Latter-day Saints felt the need for ‘places of memory’ at the very time when they felt at risk of a breach with their past. The Utah church’s claim to a piece of Vermont constituted a collective act of remembering that helped members forget
a past they could not carry with them into the future.They would be so successful that eventually they would hardly be aware that they were agreeing to forget and, if made aware, would tend to think they were forgetting Brigham Young. In fact, they were in the process of forgetting portions of Joseph Smith’s legacy that Brigham Young and his successors had taken so literally. She makes the interesting observation that the party did not visit Illinois or Missouri even though there was time and opportunity.
Quote:The version of Mormonism lived publicly in the twentieth century was the version taught in the first years of Smith’s life and preached in New York and Ohio. The more exotic doctrines from the Missouri and Illinois periods would be placed in temples and, thus, privately practiced.
Except what happens when the women don’t want to adhere to the doctrine “privately?” When the fact that the doctrine is contained in the temple no longer makes the hurt of it unmentionable?
I gree with the general premise. As groups we have a collective memory of events that we find important. These events tell our story as a people. Perhaps nobody is better at this than the Jewish people telling the stories of the old testament etc. It gives the group a collective identity. In Nauvoo there is the masonic lodge. The bottom part has a stage and and a frequent short play (every few hours) that is great for the kids. Upstairs there is a large room that our senior missionary tour guide said was used for dances and other community gatherings. I asked if this large room was where they would have their masonic meetings. The senior missionary visibly stiffened, became tight lipped, and said that they didn’t know anything about that. I felt that it was odd for the tour guide of the historical MASONIC LODGE to not have any information or even offer a general speculation as to the room where the masonic meetings where held.
This to me is an example of our collective remebering and forgetting.
Quote:Except what happens when the women don’t want to adhere to the doctrine “privately?” When the fact that the doctrine is contained in the temple no longer makes the hurt of it unmentionable?
Pain occurs.
As I see our collective remembering and forgetting there is an abundance of pain blossoming. Not only in women’s issues, or in temple related women’s issues, but elsewhere. Addressing or dealing with that pain is the hardest step. As a community we are seeing, experiencing, and participating in the coping and addressing effort. History tells us it will be a long hard haul. My issues are different than yours, but I too feel exquisite pain in the stories our faith chooses to remember and forget.
There is so much I would like to be in charge of. The number one thing is our story telling.
My question is “what SHOULD be remembered?”. Philosophically, is there criteria for what the “collective CONSCIOUSNESS” should remember? Is it wise to remember everything? What is the purpose of remembering? For example, when I write my memoirs, there are parts of my history I would much rather be forgotten. This is to inspire future generations to live up to a higher standard — not do be bogged down by their past and the embarrassing actions of their ancestors. Tongue in cheeck, Mark Twain wrote his family history, with his family tree being the series of gallows (rather than a tree itself), his ancestors all criminals and pirates. Hilarious to read, but it would would likely embarrass future generations, and may even “inspire” them to value treachery, ill gotten-gains, etcetera.
So, that is my question — what is the purpose of remembering, and what is the criteria for what should be remembered — with specific reference to the church’s history?
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