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I was particularly aware of this when in the mission field in a south american country. I disliked missionaries touting their ancestry to the membership and even worse to the investigators.
One missionary after the mission sent pictures back to all the families he had grown close with – especially the families that he had baptised. The only problem was that the picture was of him posing with his new flashy hot-rod. I couldn’t help but wonder if his parents bought him the car as a reward for serving a mission. The family that showed it to me seemed really exited to have heard from him and I kept my thoughts to myself. It left a really bad taste in my mouth.
(That last missionary was also known for his pioneer anscestry)
My family NEVER talks about our pioneer heritage. While my father was a convert from the Methodist church, my mother came from a long history of LDS heritage through her mother’s family .. People who were the original settlers of major cities in Utah, polygamists, pioneers.. Displays in museums mention them and display their dinner ware. The most famous lineage is especially never brought up. That last name is Law. My husband has a equally famous LDS last name .. But his parents were both converts with no LDS family lineage at all. It is funny that people see the last name and assume heritage.
My parents taught us that what mattered in life was what we as individuals did for God. What our family did was a nice story, but it was just that, a story to inspire us to do good things.
It is interesting to see many families in the church treat lineage as royalty. They are empire building within the society of the church. That trend makes me very uncomfortable.
amateurparent wrote:It is interesting to see many families in the church treat lineage as royalty. They are empire building within the society of the church. That trend makes me very uncomfortable.
Interesting thought. Makes me reflect on the GAs and Q15…and how many come from “royalty”. I wonder if that weighs in on the “inspiration” when extending callings???Jeff Spector did an interesting post on this: http://mormonmatters.org/2010/05/07/nepotism-in-the-church-2010-update/ http://mormonmatters.org/2009/04/21/nepotism-in-the-church-2009-update/ http://mormonmatters.org/2008/04/14/nepotism-in-the-church/ These are 3 years’ worth of updates on the topic of nepotism in church leadership from 2008, 2009 and 2010. I’ll ask him when he plans to do another update. It was interesting that he saw a shift away from it.
[img]http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/nepotismdemotivator_grande.jpeg [/img] I thought about this demotivational poster, but when I re-read the tagline it – fits so well with the “family values”!
I’m probably related to David O. McKay but can’t verify it. The famous relatives thing is a bit LDS-centric anyway.
LookingHard wrote:I thought about this demotivational poster, but when I re-read the tagline it – fits so well with the “family values”!
😆 😆 Nicely done!!Quote:
It is interesting to see many families in the church treat lineage as royalty.Feeling jipped.
Seriously I should be the General Elder’s Quorum President – Right Now.
My ancestors shook Joseph and Hyrum’s hand when they got off the boat. My great, great, great, great, (okay you get the point) grandpa rode with Hyrum and Joseph to lay out the town of Nauvoo. We crossed the stinkin’ plains 3 times. One of those was to claim and bring west John Taylor’s cattle. And since we didn’t die crossing on any of those trips, Brigham Young sent our family down to Southern Utah to meet the Piautes and settle Iron County. To top it off – Parley P. Pratt himself, came to dedicate the fort/church there and he and my great, great, great (you know guy from before) killed and skinned the animals for stew that night.
That is why I deserve to be the First Ever General Elder’s Quorum President – I have connections.
Quote:That is why I deserve to be the First Ever General Elder’s Quorum President – I have connections.
Mom3: You will be my Write In Candidate next time they hand out ballots!
mom3, I think you were supposed to carry on the tradition. Kill and skin some animals for stew…and the prophet will show up at your door. It is your foreordained right. Our ward is getting ready for trek too, and they also were asked to find an ancestor to “walk for”. The kids have been giving talks about who they picked in church each week leading up to it. I’ve been surprised how many had ancestors who not only were pioneers, but also were in the Martin or Willey groups. (But I do live in Utah. . . so probably shouldn’t be surprised.) There was an info graphic in the BYU magazine that showed the numbers of what all of the total pioneer crossings were like. I found a link to it:
http://magazine.byu.edu/?act=view&a=2889 It wasn’t until I taught a primary lesson from the D&C manual that I finally had a clearer picture of what crossing the plains was really like. I got the idea growing up that most people suffered greatly, but a from what I’ve since learned, most people had a perfectly fine time. Some of them even said they enjoyed it! I thought it would be more fitting for our ward to reenact the first year of when the pioneers were in Salt Lake Valley. That’s when things got really bad!
Overall, I don’t like the idea of Trek. The kids in our ward are already bearing their testimonies about it, and they haven’t even gone yet. I think it’s been hyped up in our ward that this will be THE defining moment in these kids’ lives. They will never leave the church, never doubt, etc. if they go. I went to Trek when I was a teen. . . doesn’t seem to work in all cases I guess. ..
I think it will be as fun as any youth conference would be, but I question the value of manufactured sentiment at building testimonies. How does going on a fake trek yield the same results as the real one? hawkgrrrl wrote:I think it will be as fun as any youth conference would be, but I question the value of manufactured sentiment at building testimonies. How does going on a fake trek yield the same results as the real one?
When you go in December and there’s an outbreak of norovirus. When the kids realize there’s no cell service and they don’t know what to do with their texting hand. When nobody brought a can opener and none of the adults know how to fix dried beans. When in spirit of authenticity, no one brings toilet paper (see thread on right handed sacrament taking). When the stake president tells everyone that if they have faith the prediction of rain, gale force winds, and flash floods won’t happen and they’ll all be fine. etc., etc., etc..
The majority of pioneers had an easy journey. The problem is when talk turns to the Willy and Martin Handcart companies. Facts: Hand carts were a short lived experiment by the church. These people started out poorly equipped just because they were using hand carts. Adding to their poor equipage, these two companies made a series of poor decisions at every step of their journey. These poor decisions led to a horrific outcome for a huge number of people.
Outcome: As a culture, we could use their experience as a lesson to promote how important it is to be properly prepared, and how important it is to continue making wise decisions when on a life journey. We could focus on the experts present whose advice was ignored. Those experts stayed on to try to salvage people from their foolish choices — that is a valuable lesson.
As a culture, we have chosen to view the story in a different way. People died, others lost limbs and their long term health, but they stayed in the church. We have focused on that. The rescuers cared so much about these people that the search parties were sent out on the Sabbath. We focus on the prophet telling people it was okay to work hard on the sabbath in order to save lives.
In the past 30 years, we have started to venerate these two hand cart companies. This concerns me. Terrible things happened. It was awful. But let’s not promote poor decision making. When someone talks about Follow The Prophet, He Knows The Way” and then mentions the Willy and Martin companies .. Sigh. SMH.
I think I remember a quote that talked about Brigham Young stating after the tragic hand cart companies that if anybody did that again, he would excommunicate them. And now we praise them – and ignore that for some it was the trial that they lost the faith in church leaders and left the church.
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