Section 132… missed it by “that much”

[Anonymous]

On Own Now wrote:

Quote:

a fair number of women

As always, I simply ask… Please broaden the tent to include men like me. This isn’t a men vs women issue. I am every bit as opposed to the polygamy as any woman here. My opposition to it goes to 11. Polygamy was the single issue that led to my faith crisis. It is the first and foremost doctrine I would change if I was prophet/seer/revelator for a day. There are others, but I would be satisfied if I could make this one change before senior members of the Q12 figured out what was going on and tackled me to the ground, kicking and punching, behind the pulpit of the Conference Center.

I know that there are some men that shrug it off as not a big deal. I also know there are some women who wear it as a badge of honor that they are OK with the idea of polygamy, since it is “commanded by God”. I see it as a hard-liner vs reformer concern.

I shouldn’t limit, that’s true. Thanks for the reminder.

When I had my big discussion with my husband, I noticed that he didn’t hear me at first. I love him to death and vice versa, but his reaction to my consternation was to assure me that advocating polygamy is the fast track to excommunication. He was telling me, This is a church governance issue, and the church has it under control. What’s the problem? It took awhile, but I explained that I don’t give two hoots about the practical problems of stomping out intermountain west polygamy. I’m focused on the message Section 132 carries to my heart and my daughters’ hearts. Ended up being a good discussion.

So, I think it is a hard-liner/traditionalist vs reformer thing. When I reread Jeffrey Holland’s 2006 PBS interview, I am not encouraged because “95%” is high. On the other hand, 2006 is starting to look like a long time ago, and maybe things are changing.

Is there a tension between faith-promoting history and factual, scholarly history?

… I don’t know of any institution that has had complete peace with its historians, with its storytellers. … I am not afraid of history. I don’t know of anybody who’s afraid of history. Whatever our history is, that’s our history. That’s it. Whatever. I know what I love. I know what makes me a Latter-day Saint. I … had faith before I had doubt, and I have faith after any doubts have been explored. …

You don’t want somebody else telling you your history, and therefore I would like to tell my children, and the children of the church, the youth of the church collectively, I’d like to be having them hear it from friends rather than enemies. I’m just doubtful about the motives of some. … But there is not anything anybody can say to me that will make me afraid of my history. … But I think we are genuinely anxious to teach in a way that is appropriate and enlivening.

The area of history that is most disturbing to some is the messy beginnings with polygamy. There was a serious religious principle involved. I have the sense of the church pulling away from or not wanting to talk about it. … It will never disavow that it was practiced; it will never disavow that it was believed, that it had biblical precedent. … I myself — like probably, I don’t know, 95 percent of the current General Authorities of the church — I am the product, at least on my mother’s side, of polygamous great-great-grandparents, four, five generations back. So I’m not going to disavow my past, and I’m not going to disavow the church’s past. In the same breath, we will be unequivocal in declaring that it is not now practiced, and say it with equal energy, with equal vehemence. … As of 1890 we believe it was revealed [not to practice plural marriage], and so therefore the change is not the doctrine or the practice, but the issue is revelation — the founding, guiding principle of the church. So it’s loyalty to the revelation. It’s loyalty to the role of the prophet. …

[Anonymous]

It’s this book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000PKT1N2/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

I’ve just ordered one. I’ll let you know what the included sections are.

More info on the book:

Quote:

One University of Utah graduate student in 1963 described Mormon fundamentalism as a “protest to adaptation.”18While certainly a majority of Mormons had grown weary of the conflicts with the larger society, some dissenters sought to preserve the old ways, and some were in positions of religious authority.19 They grumbled and fought change from within until they died or were driven out by the striving for a new future that Grant represented. In a way, the Church insured that these fundamentalists would metastasize. By the 1930s they emerged as an annoying voice in opposition, challenging the big church’s version of whether, how, and why this change came about.

One of the things I stumbled across in studying this subject was that in 1930 the LDS Church published Latter-Day Revelations: Selections from the Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As its title states, it was an abridged version of the Doctrine and Covenants, one of the four Mormon canonized texts. It contained forty-one sections, some of them abridged, and did not include Section 132 on celestial marriage. Prepared by James E. Talmage, an educator, scientist, and apostle, the book was published in English, Spanish, and Norwegian. Fundamentalist Mormons leaped on the book as an example of the Church’s continuing efforts to jettison unique Mormon doctrines. The Church quickly retreated, withdrawing the book from sale.20 In 1941 an essay in the fundamentalist Mormon monthly magazine TRUTH pointed out that, in addition to omitting Section 132, Section 85, which predicted a time when one “mighty and strong” would have to set the Church “in order,” had also been omitted. “These two revelations apparently constituted a thorn in the side of the leaders of the Church who had repudiated and surrendered the principles involved.” TRUTH then noted sarcastically that omitted revelations “were considered obsolete and of no ‘enduring value’, and hence were omitted from Dr. Talmage’s book.”21

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V41N02_87.pdf

[Anonymous]

Fundamentalism is stupid and opposed to more than one key principle of Mormonism.

‘Nuff said. :silent:

[Anonymous]

I agree Ray, I’m reminded of the TED talk I shared a few weeks back about the dangers of fundamentalism in any religion or philosophy: “I’m right, you’re wrong, shut up.”

[Author]

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