Roadshows. Will they ever become the norm again in LDS wards?

Growing up in California, in my stake and ward the “roadshow” was a BIG DEAL. Months were spent preparing for a long night of a play and short acts.

I was quite young the first time I watched a roadshow. I can’t recall the main play, but I’ll never forget the Olio act (At that young age I heard it as the “Oreo Act.”) A young woman in our ward belted — and I mean belted — out a mean rendition of “The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company C.” Because of the act, I actually enjoy the song, and even find myself occasionally whistling the tune.

Going to the roadshow was always an enjoyable event. There were hundreds of Southern California members, crammed into the cultural hall, metal chairs set up in rows over the basketball court facing the stage, with the basketball hoop lifted up out of the way of spectators.

I was never in the main part of a roadshow, but I once wrote an starred in a short one-act play that I wrote. It was about Dracula going out for a late dinner and discovering that he had accidentally walked out into the middle of an eclipse. (I digress here to confess that I more or less stole the idea from a Woody Allen work in a book. Since I was about 13, did not know copyright laws, and my “play” played once for free and no longer exists, I hope forgiving readers will consider it an homage and not plagiarism.) 

Anyways, I got to die at the end and that was cool.

Later, as roadshows started to decline in ubiquity, our stake decided to have wards make silent movies. I got to write a comedy script about a sheriff who protects a town from a bad guy. I played the bad guy. The sheriff was inept; his girlfriend was the “crack shot” who saved the day at the end. It was fun; a real salute to the old silent comedians. still have a copy of the movie, filmed at an abandoned horse racing track. It's on Facebook here.

I hope roadshows become popular again in my stake. I know they still are in some wards and stakes because I can locate some on YouTube, a luxury we did not have in the 1970s and 1980s. 

The last roadshow I recall seeing featured my Long Beach, Calif. ward bishopric. The play was titled “It Came to Pass.” Our bishop and counselors entered the stage dressed in their Sunday best. They solemnly intoned, “it came to pass. It came to pass. It came to pass.” 

Then they quickly shed their pants, shirt, ties and suit coats to reveal athletic sweats underneath. The trio moved into a modified football formation. One counselor hiked a football to the bishop. The other counselor ran a pass pattern into the audience. The bishop threw him a pass. I can’t recall if he caught it.

Maybe it wouldn’t be the best idea in the world to bring back the roadshow. 😊

-- Doug Gibson

--- Originally published at StandardNET

Satan and Jesus Christ are ‘bros’ when Romney ran for president

 

(I wrote this piece more than 11 years ago. I like it, so I rescued it from Wayback purgatory. The photo above is of Romney in 2012 after he defeated Newt Gingrich in the Florida Republican presidential primary.)

I love this lead from an Idaho newspaper (Rexburg Standard Journal) covering an LDS fireside: “A top LDS religious leader gave a rare unscripted fireside to Brigham Young University-Idaho students Saturday.”

“Unscripted fireside?” With apologies to Orwell, that’s a delightful phrase. Why was it unscripted?

According to the article, it’s because M. Russell Ballard, a member of the church’s 12 Apostles, admitted that the LDS Church believes that Jesus Christ and Satan, Old Scratch himself, were brothers.

The following is from reporter Nate Sunderland’s article: “You remember Mr. (Mike) Huckabee (who was also vying to be the Republican candidate for president), who among other things said that Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil were brothers?” Ballard asked students. “Remember that? It went all over the media. “Well they are!” Ballard exclaimed to a laughing student body. “But they (the media and nonmembers) don’t understand that, because they don’t have the (LDS gospel) restoration. They don’t understand the spiritual relationship that … we are all sons and daughters of God, and that Lucifer was one of those and (that) he chose to use his agency in an unrighteous way.”

Back to this column: One of the ironies about being a Mormon is that a religion that is so progressive, eccentric and so different — and more interesting — than conventional, mainstream Christian religions is staffed by a conservative, button-down public relations-conscious, every-word-approved bureaucracy.

I concede that may be a smart move to manage a church of more than 10 million — discipline does have its advantages — but isn’t it interesting that the deepest journeys into LDS church doctrine are found in high priest group meetings, and not the semiannual general conferences? Trust me, we talk a lot about Christ and Satan being highly favored sons of Heavenly Father in the preexistence. But just so it’s clear, we think Old Scratch has fallen out of favor!

During the 2008 presidential campaign, it was easy to know when candidate Mitt Romney was being asked a question about LDS doctrine, such as where the Garden of Eden was. He had that deer in the headlights look, paired with a nervous, dismissive comment such as, “who told you we believe that!?” Of course Romney was partially derailed by the GOP’s own semi-fundamentalist pharisee, Mike Huckabee, blabbing that Mitt thinks Christ and Satan were brothers.

Since Mitt’s probably going to run again, maybe Elder Ballard is trying to pave the way for a smoother theological trail through Bible Belt Iowa. Are we far off from a brand new media campaign pitching Jesus Christ, the Great I Am, and Satan, the Son of the Morning Star, as onetime comrades in arms who went their separate ways?

Naah, not going to happen. But it’d make a heck of a movie.

-- Doug Gibson

Mormons, Catholics both have to deal with dark side of their histories

 

There’s an interesting article in the Fall 2013 issue of The Journal of Mormon History. “Evil in the Family: Mormons and Catholics Struggling with the Dark Side of Their Histories,” by Father Daniel P. Dwyer, notes that both the Catholic and Mormon faiths claim their church as the one established by Jesus Christ. Yet, he adds, both faiths share atrocities committed by the most seemingly devout members of the respective faiths.

A lot of Mormons may take offense at their church being adversely compared to Catholicism’s long history of misdeeds. But compare these two accounts of atrocities, offered by Dwyer. Here is the first:

“Enrico and the rest of the band held a council and, after sunrise, attacked the Jews in the hall with arrows and lances. Breaking the bolts and the doors, they killed the Jews, about seven hundred in number, who in vain resisted the force and attack of so many thousands. They killed the women also, and with their swords pierced tender children of whatever age and sex. The Jews seeing that their Christian enemies were attacking them and their children, and they were sparing no age, likewise fell upon one another, brothers, children, wives and sisters, and thus they perished at each other’s hands. Horrible to say, mothers cut the throats of nursing children with knives and stabbed others, preferring them to perish thus by their own hands rather than to be killed by the weapons of the uncircumcised.”

Here’s the other example:

“I saw several bones of what must have been very small children. Dr. Brewer says from what he saw he thinks some of the infants were butchered. The mothers doubtless had these in their arms, and the same shot or blow may have deprived both of life.

“The scene of the massacre, even at this late day, was horrible to look upon. Women’s hair, in detached locks and masses, hung to (sic) the sage brushes and was strewn over the ground in many places. Parts of little children’s dresses and of female costume dangled from the shrubbery or lay scattered about; and among these, here and there, on every hand, for at least a mile in the direction of the road, by two miles east and west. there gleamed, bleached white by the weather, the skulls and other bones of those who had suffered. A glance into the wagon when all these had been collected revealed a sight which can never be forgotten.”

The former is an account of Catholic crusaders in 1096 killing Jews trapped in a hall, put there by a bishop for their “protection.” The latter is an 1859 account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Two years earlier Mormon “crusaders” had massacred non-Mormon settlers traveling to California. The massacre occurred as the settlers were being led to “safety.”

These are acts of pure evil, encouraged by Satan, if one is a believer. How does one square these massacres with belief in a faith? Dwyer offers three options: “we can try to rationalize the evil and explain it away; we can abandon our respective faiths and deal with, or ignore evil, from the perspective of outsiders; or we can try to admit and understand the evil and look for ways our traditions can help us cope with the aftermath and prevent recurrences.”

The third option is often attempted — at least in part — on a singular basis. The LDS Church, for example, has expressed regret for the massacre, among other gestures. The Catholic Church has attempted apologies for much of its sordid history and the priest sexual abuse scandals of the past several decades. However, to fully attempt to live the third option requires consistency. Example: the first option — rationalize and explain away — more or less still defines the LDS Church’s reaction to its “Jim Crow” policies toward blacks in the church, which lasted until 1978.

And, as Dwyer notes, the third option, to be consistent, must apply to all members of a faith, even the most powerful. Compare these two declaration, both from the same era. The first, from Pope Pius IX, in 1864, the Syllabus of Errors (NOTE THAT THE FOLLOWING WAS URGED NOT TO BE BELIEVED BY CATHOLICS):

“Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ.”

“Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion.”

“The church is not a true and perfect society.”

“The Roman pontiffs have, by their too arbitrary conduct, contributed to the division of the Church into Eastern and Western.”

“Catholics may approve of the system of educating youths unconnected with the Catholic faith and the power of the Church.”

“The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.”

“In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the state.”

“The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.”

And, in early 1857, several months prior to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, LDS Church leaders Brigham Young shared this with the Saints in Salt Lake City, relates Dwyer:

“I have known a great many men who have left this church for whom there is no chance whatever for exaltation, but if their blood had been spilled, it would have been better for them. The wickedness and ignorance of the nations forbid this principle’s being in full force.

“This is loving your neighbor as ourselves; if he needs help, help him; and if he wants salvation and it is necessary to spill his blood on the earth in order that he may be saved, spill it. Any of you who understand the principles of eternity, if you have sinned a sin requiring the shedding of blood, except the sin unto death, would not be satisfied nor rest until your blood should be spilled, that you might gain that salvation you desire. That is the way to love mankind.”

Both statements, from Pius IX and Brigham Young, are repugnant, and remind of the theology of radical Islam today. While Young’s words are more violent, the state theology espoused by the late pope would have likely led to violence. Yet, I’m glad Dwyer chose these two examples, precisely because both Pius IX and Young are beloved, often-honored figures within their faiths. Nevertheless, they made statements that no sensible Catholic, or Mormon, would adhere to today.

As Dwyer notes, there are contexts to the above statements. Both faced challenges by hostile powers. Both wanted to consolidate power for what they felt was a good cause. When looking at these examples, it’s best to understand that doctrine and practices for both faiths, Catholic and Mormon, is dynamic, in fact more dynamic than many members or leaders might see or admit to. That’s a good thing. A failure for any religion to change many of its practices or beliefs would nearly always lead to, at least, social ostracism, or at worst, violence and tragedy.

Later in the JMH essay, Dwyer compares the doctrine of papal infallibility with the role of a Mormon prophet. What happens when a pope, or an LDS prophet, spouts something that isn’t true? One example is Young’s failed effort to institute the “Adam-God Doctrine.” Dwyer offers these explanations:

“... even some of our own people misunderstand the doctrine of papal infallibility. It does not mean that a pope is always correct — even when he teaches doctrine. His teaching is infallible only under severely limited conditions. … So if Pope Francis told me the sky was green, it would still be blue.” Later, Dwyer answers the confusion Mormons may feel over Young’s insistence that Adam was God by writing, “If he was wrong, how could he have been a prophet, seer and revelator? Or, as in Catholicism, is the exercise of of the prophetic ministry something that happens only in very defined situations?”

These are interesting topics, and Dwyer’s article explores even more similarities and conflicts between Catholicism and Mormonism. What’s most beneficial is the advice that both faiths acknowledge a sometimes adverse, and wicked, past and that practical dynamism, and human fallibility, will create leaders who make mistakes, even in a church that proclaims itself THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST.

As Dwyer notes, in Romans 3:23, it reads “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” The late Mormon scholar Eugene England extolled the strength of the church, its structure, its fellowship, and its role as a place to gain strength and learn to be a more godly individual; all of that occurs, of course, in the present and the future.

--- Doug Gibson

--- Originally published at StandardBlogs in 2013.