Do Mormons really ban playing cards from the home?

Originally published in 2010. I brought it back from WayBack Archive because I still find the issue fascinating. I wish I could locate Cal Grondahl's cartoon that went with it.

Tired of repeat Go Fish games, I was shamefacedly teaching my younger daughter how to play poker. I didn’t have much success; she kept giggling when I tried to explain what a “flush” is.

What’s interesting is my first instinct was to use Rook cards — the ones with a bird — to teach her a variation of poker. I couldn’t find any in the home although I’ve seen them around. Rook cards, you could once find a deck in every active Mormon’s home. I grew up with them and we played “gin rummy” with Rook cards on many family home evening nights. It got me wondering: Are playing cards still mostly banned in LDS homes? We have a deck; although rarely used, I finally used it for the poker game with the daughter … I stressed no gambling!

Growing up, conventional playing cards were banned in my home. We only used Rook. One only had to open up “Mormon Doctrine” to see why my parents banned the cards. It reads, “Members of the Church should not belong to bridge or other type of card clubs, and they should neither play cards nor have them in their homes. By cards is meant, of course, the spotted face cards used by gamblers. To the extent that church members play cards they are out of harmony with their inspired leaders. Innocent non-gambling games played with other types of cards, except for the waste of time in many instances, are not objectionable.”

Other LDS sources have been a bit more moderate on the issue, describing cards as “time-wasters” that can be dangerous since they can lead to gambling. In a New Era article from 1984, author Boyd R. Thomas explained that in the days prior to television, cards were considered a time-waster that could lead to addiction, and perhaps, a gambling obsession. The article includes this 1939 quote from then-President Joseph F. Smith, published in “Gospel Doctrine:” While a simple game of cards in itself may be harmless, it is a fact that by immoderate repetition it ends in an infatuation for chance schemes, in habits of excess, in waste of precious time, in dulling and stupor of the mind, and in the complete destruction of religious feeling. … There is the grave danger that lurks in persistent card playing, which begets the spirit of gambling, of speculation and that awakens the dangerous desire to get something for nothing.”

The LDS Church has long opposed gambling, and with its influence one can expect that the lottery will never come to Utah. In the November 1972 Ensign, Dallin H. Oaks, then president of BYU and today a church apostle, penned an article titled “The Evils of Gambling.” Referring to gambling, he wrote, “We therefore advise and urge all members of the Church to refrain from participation in any activity which is contrary to the view herein set forth.” That would presumably include playing with traditional playing cards.

It’s my guess that most active Mormons likely take a dim view of cards, even if they are not using them to gamble. There remains a strong traditional disapproval of traditional cards. In fact, Rook was invented by game companies for the express purpose of meeting the game-playing needs of fundamentalist protestants who objected to traditional cards. I’m sure that sales to Mormons were counted by Rook makers in the second half of the 20th century. According to pagat.com, there is also a similar set of cards, called the Kvitlech cards, used by certain Jews in Central Europe who are forbidden to use standard cards.

-- Doug Gibson

Despite what you might hear cremation is acceptable to LDS doctrine

(This article was first published in 2010 at StandardBlogs.)

I serve as a home teacher to an elderly woman. She has very little money and tries to stay independent. Eager not to have her death be a burden to her children, she long ago started putting money away so that when she dies, she can be cremated.

However, as she expressed to me, the decision has caused her anguish, as some members of the church have told her that cremation is not permitted in the LDS Church. “I simply have no other way of paying for my funeral,” she told me with a mixture of frustration and determination.

In the past weeks, the issue of cremation versus burial has become more personal to my family. My wife’s father, a member of the church who lived alone in Hungary, died. A somewhat reclusive man, he was dead at least a week before we were notified. Wanting to arrange for a funeral celebration in early April, we had no alternative but to have him cremated and his remains stored until the service.

The idea that cremation would be contradictory to God’s law has always struck me as ridiculous. Common sense dictates that someone killed in a plane crash, for example, is pretty well cremated. But, like the woman I home teach, I frequently was told growing up in the church that cremation was wrong. One rationale I heard often was that a cremated body could not be resurrected. That seemed like a flip answer to a serious question.

The reason for the “cremation is wrong” is probably due to its reference in “Mormon Doctrine,” which was written by the late LDS Apostle Bruce R. McConkie. Now, “Mormon Doctrine” is an amazing work, but its title is not accurate. It’s Bruce R. McConkie’s “Mormon Doctrine.” In fact, some of the book was changed after its first edition. In the second edition, here is what McConkie says about cremation: “…Cremation of the dead is not part of the gospel; it is a practice which has been avoided by the saints in all ages. The Church today counsels its members not to cremate their dead. Such a procedure would find gospel acceptance only under the most extraordinary and unusual circumstances …”

After reading that, I can understand why I, and my fellow ward member, have been told that cremation is wrong. Based on McConkie’s interpretation, poverty, it seems, would not be an “extraordinary” or “unusual” circumstance. McConkie’s opinion on cremation was shared by very early Christians, who regarded cremation as showing disrespect for God.

Except, McConkie’s wrong on this issue. Cremation is acceptable to LDS doctrine. In the July 1972 LDS Church publication, The New Era, Spencer J. Palmer, a former mission president in Korea, offered the LDS Church position on cremation: “Funerals and burials are prohibitive in cost to some of the most faithful members of the Church in that part of the world. Hence, although I personally prefer embalming and burial and although it has been the pattern followed by Israel, there appears to be no prohibition against cremation in the scriptures or in the theology of the Church.”

In the August 1991 LDS Church publication, The Ensign, Roger R. Keller, associate professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University, gave a lukewarm but definitive OK for cremation as an option. He wrote, “Ultimately, whether a person’s body was buried at sea, destroyed in combat or an accident, intentionally cremated, or buried in a grave, the person will be resurrected.”

I think the “cremation is wrong” doctrine is a lot like the “caffeinated soda is wrong” or “white sugar is wrong” rhetoric you hear often from well-meaning but over-exuberant members of the church. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is designed to provide comfort to our lives, not worry a poor old woman to her death quicker than she deserves.

-- Doug Gibson

Mormon Doctrine enjoyed a long, controversial history

This article was originally published at StandardBlogs in 2010.

“Mormon Doctrine” is finally going out of print. The late apostle Bruce R. McConkie’s interpretation of LDS theology was a common sight in the homes of active Mormons for decades. Even today, it’s often seen in the homes of older Mormons. In fact, it will likely be decades before the book becomes difficult to find in used bookstores or ebay, etc.

Peggy Fletcher Stack of the Salt Lake Tribune wrote an excellent article about the “popular but polarizing” “Mormon Doctrine.” McConkie’s book was written as an authoritative index of beliefs, but in truth it caused much controversy; in fact as much from outside critics as within the hierarchy of the Mormon Church. The first edition of “Mormon Doctrine” — and a copy of that must be considered rare — prompted the LDS leadership to propose more than 1,000 changes. Eventually, in the early 1960s, McConkie revised “Mormon Doctrine” and it was re-published with the clear idea that it was just McConkie’s opinion.

Nevertheless, as an active Mormon who grew up in the 1960s, 70s and early 80s, I can attest that the many times I or others had a dispute on theology, “Mormon Doctrine” was the first place we went to check and see who was “right.”

According to Fletcher Stack’s article, a key problem with the first edition was severe attacks on the Roman Catholic Church. Later problems with the book were its content regarding blacks. In early editions, McConkie had stated a reversal of denying the priesthood to blacks would never occur. And “even in the most recent edition … McConkie wrote that God cursed Cain with ‘a mark of dark skin, and he became the ancestor of the black race,’” writes Fletcher Stack.

In recent years, the Mormon Church has become public relations conscious. Although McConkie is regarded as a beloved late apostle, — his last public address, as he was dying, has been sold for years and he wrote chapter headings in LDS scripture — once-popular books such as “Mormon Doctrine” are being phased out, particularly those that say politically incorrect things about blacks.

The recent battle over Proposition 8 in California has made the need for a more enlightened church more necessary. This is a simple reality, and it is not meant to imply that official church doctrines are changing today, only that a softer stick is preferred and more care has been taken between what the church believes and what one man’s specific opinions are.

“Mormon Doctrine” was to many 20th century Mormons what Parley P. Pratt’s “The Key to Science of Theology” was to late 19th century Mormons, a book on many coffee tables. No doubt another LDS book will one day rise in this century and enjoy decades of influence.

-- Doug Gibson

LDS retrenchment and why Ezra Taft Benson wanted to be George Wallace’s VP pick

In Matthew Bowman’s book “The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith,” the Mormon business/educational strategy of correlation is explained. The business advantages of correlation are offset by an educational culture that stays, by design, into narrow theological positions that are not open to debate. In Bowman’s book, he also spends some time on the LDS retrenchment movement among its hierarchy, a conservative movement to interpret doctrine strictly according to Scriptures and revelation received through modern LDS prophets and apostles.

In what serves as a definition of retrenchment, Bowman recounts a message conservative LDS Apostle Bruce R. McConkie sent to an LDS academic (Eugene England). “God has given us apostles and prophets. … It is my province to teach to the church what the doctrine is. It is your province to repeat what I say or remain silent.”

Retrenchment, with its emphasis on simplistic answers to questions that could be debated thoroughly, fit well with correlation, a concept that by its nature was hampered by multiple alternatives. Retrenchment, which flourished through the last half of the 20th century, was a wish to return to the theological days of Brigham Young, a strong leader who brooked little dissent.

According to Bowman, the father of retrenchment was the late LDS apostle and president Joseph Fielding Smith. Fielding Smith was an opponent of colleagues in the LDS ecclesiatical hierarchy, such as B.H. Roberts, who in an attempt to explain evolution, “posited that generations of human, or human-like, beings had lived and died long before God sent Adam and Eve to earth,” writes Bowman, who adds that “… Fielding Smith, convinced that Roberts was promulgating false doctrine and suspicious that he was secretely promoting evolution, accused Roberts in a public lecture of desiring ‘to square the teachings in the Bible with the teachings of modern science and philosophy …” An offended Roberts, as well as apostle James Talmadge, complained to LDS Church President Heber J. Grant.

Grant wanted no part of the debate and advised the principals to drop the dispute. As Bowman notes, though, Grant’s reluctance to take a side essentially turned the LDS Church into an institution where, “No longer would church authorities debate matters of doctrine in public.” Because the world was slowly moving toward an era of post World War II Cold War conservatism, it’s not surprising that the conservatism that Fielding Smith favored became the ideology most popular among the LDS leadership.

Under Fielding Smith, his son-in-law, apostle Bruce R. McConkie, apostle and future prophet Ezra Taft Benson, current apostle Boyd K. Packer, and other leaders such as BYU President Ernest Wilkinson, Mormon theology was “characterized by an exclusive focus on the canon of Mormon scripture. They sought to grant it as much authority as possible and to take its claims as literally as possible,” writes Bowman. The new retrenchment conservatism of 1960s Mormonism echoed Fielding Smith’s disdain for Roberts’ pre-Adamic ideas. In his iconic book, “Mormon Doctrine,” McConkie describes the theory as “satanic.”

One aspect of retrenchment was a belief in dispensationalism. As Bowman writes, “Dispensationalists believe that because of human wickedness, the world was doomed to decay and degeneration before Christ’s return to save it; for them, the Bible taught of war, famine, conspiracy and disease.”

As early as 1946, Fielding Smith had written “Signs of the Times,” a dispensationalist tome that provided a pessimistic blueprint of the future. The Cold War, anti-communism, the counterculture movement, all served to fuel retrenchment efforts in the LDS hierarchy. W. Cleon Skousen, police chief, BYU professor, dispensationalist and anti-communist, became a best-selling LDS author. (Recently his books, long consigned to basements and Deseret Industry shelves, have regained popularity with the rise of Glenn Beck, a modern-day LDS dispensationalist).

As Bowman points out, the popular LDS musical play, “Saturday’s Warrior,” is a creation of retrenchment and dispensationalism. In the play, former pre-mortal spirits sent to earth are pressured by wicked earthly peers to be “cool.” In one now-dated scene, a Mormon is taunted because his parents’ are expecting an eighth child. Bowman points out that one of the play’s songs, “Zero Population,” is sung by “his villainous teenage friends (who) impropably praise birth control.”

Ezra Taft Benson was a major player in the retrenchment movement for a couple of generations. An impressive leader who was tapped by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to be secretary of agriculture, Benson later exemplified the LDS Church’s opposition to communism, atheism and liberal initiatives to expand government. As Bowman writes, “To some Mormons, communism appeared to violate the principle of free agency, human beings’ right to choose their own destinies that derived from their divine heritage.”

David O. McKay, for example, LDS leader during retrenchment, was a strong opponent of communism. McKay was willing to incorporate that activism into major areas of the church he led, such as the McCarthy-ite investigation of professors at BYU, who were suspected of weak loyalties to the Gospel and patriotism

However, Benson took the LDS hierarchy’s opposition to communism to extreme levels. Had it not been for the wisdom of President McKay, Benson might have caused the LDS Church embarrassment that it would still be dealing with today. For example, Benson became a disciple of the conspiratorial anti-communist group the John Birch Society, an organization which had already been politically excommunicated from the Republican Party. As Bowman relates, Benson was so impressed with John Birch Society founder Robert Welch — a man who accused his former boss Eisenhower of being a communist — that he lobbied McKay to allow Welch to speak at the church’s semi-annual general conference and lobbied to have the LDS leadership endorse the Birchers. Fortunately, McKay resisted those efforts.

As Bowman relates, McKay also nixed Benson’s desire to be the vice presidential nominee of segregationalist third-party candidate George Wallace in 1968. It’s likely that the LDS Church would still be dealing with such an ignoble action today had not the wise McKay told Benson no.

Nevertheless, retrenchment did lead the LDS hierarchy into politically based decisions that extend from the 1970s (opposition to the ERA), the 1980s (opposition to the MX missile system construction in Utah), the 1990s (the excommunication of several LDS dissident academics) and even a few years ago, with its stance against gay marriage in California.

Retrenchment, however, is an ailing, perhaps dying ideology among Mormons. While there are still factions, usually older Mormons, who adhere to the rigidness of a Fielding Smith, Benson, Skousen and McConkie, most Mormons today have moved toward the liberal ideas of Roberts once denounced. In 2010, Deseret Book announced it would no longer print “Mormon Doctrine.” Harsh statements on homosexuality in General Conference by Packer were toned down for revised official publication.

History often repeats itself; it appears Mormonism’s leaders have tired of retrenchment. However, the impact of retrenchment should not be downplayed. It’s worth noting that at the end of the LDS era of theological debate, 1935, only 36 percent of BYU students believed that “creation did not involve evolution.” As Bowman notes, by 1973, “81 percent (of students) felt that way.”

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs

'The Mormon Jesus' -- a history of Christ within the LDS faith

Several years ago, John Turner, who holds a Ph.D. in American History and Masters of Divinity, wrote “Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet,” a candid, warts-and-all biography of Joseph Smith’s successor, who moved the Latter-day Saints across America and oversaw its growth in the western United States.

His interest in Mormonism has not waned, and this month Turner published “The Mormon Jesus: A Biography,” (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). It provides an overview of Christ’s role in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Besides that, it also compares how Christ has been perceived since Joseph Smith and what influence that has had on the LDS faith. Most who walk into a Mormon chapel view Christ as a handsome, clean, bearded man, one with compassion but strength. How that scenario evolved is an interesting read.

Turner provides the cultural history of these portrayals of Christ and even mentions the era of Arnold Friberg, whose art still influences how Mormons view Book of Mormon personalities. Apparently, Friberg’s depiction of macho Christ (The Risen Lord) was a bit to much for LDS Church leaders, who sought a less-muscled savior. 

The move for a muscular Christ was an era of Christianity in which Protestant pews were not filled with many males. There were outside influences to Mormonism, despite its Christ who is considered our literal elder brother, distinct from Heavenly Father, and composed of a body of flesh and bone.

While the Mormon Christ has remained white and tall, there have been some inroads toward a more delicate Christ. Minerva Teichert, and her Christ in a Red Robe, is an example. 

Turner begins the book by guiding readers through the church’s annual Hill Cumorah Pageant, and its portrayal of Christ. He rejects claims from some evangelicals that Mormons are not Christians with many examples, the easiest is The Book of Mormon’s central message, which is a belief in Christ. Turner is not a Mormon, a trait which provided necessary objectivity in his Young biography.

The same applies with “The Mormon Jesus.” Turner guides readers through Young’s attempt to instill the Adam-God doctrine to 19th century members, an idea that never really caught on and was eventually downplayed, if never repudiated, by a frustrated prophet.

Also, the racist belief that blacks and native Americans were inferior to whites is discussed. Turner recounts influential church teaching, not scriptural, which advanced these ideas, such as blacks being less valiant in the pre-existence. This racist theory expounded from interpretations of Noah’s son, Ham, in many non-Mormon interpretations.

Turner also includes the much-believed idea of generations past that Native Americans would see their skin color change if they embraced the Gospel. It’s jarring to learn that many Latter-day Saints assumed this to the point of church leaders pointing to Native Americans, claiming their skin had whitened.

This is our history, for better or worse, and it plays a role in how beliefs evolve. But there is much to favor, as well. Turner clearly is impressed by Mormonism’s belief that man can aspire to be like God, that Christ’s perfection is a goal for mankind. The Mormon conception of Jesus is personal, with a deity that stands for us not only as the means to our atonement, but as a source of strength. 

Interestingly, even this perception of Christ has been shaped through decades of competing ideas. Near the end of the book, Turner contrasts the beliefs of the late LDS apostle Bruce R. McConkie, who viewed Christ as a more formal deity, one who provided a path toward exaltation so long as obedience and formal rites were followed.

This is contrasted with the more-recent popularity of Stephen Robinson’s “Believing Christ,” which describes the atonement with a parable of a young child having less than a dollar to buy a sought-after bicycle. Her father gives her the rest of the money because she already gave all that she had. As Turner notes, Robinson’s ideas that mortals, despite their liabilities, can enter exaltation with Christ’s unlimited power is closer in spirit to the idea of salvation by grace.

While McConkie’s grasp of exaltation remains doctrine — and anyone who watches his last conference talk, delivered shortly before his death, wouldn’t doubt his belief in Christ — in recent years the rhetoric of Robinson has gained traction. An example is this month’s LDS general conference, where LDS apostle Dieter F. Uchtdorf told listeners, “If you cannot muster faith right now, begin with hope.”

“The Mormon Jesus” is an example of excellent Mormon scholarship that can be found from authors outside the faith. Turner’s devotion to his subject and his passion for LDS people and history are strong. It stands with members Terryl and Fiona Givens’ “The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life” as a worthy look at the LDS faith.

-- Doug Gibson

This review was first published at StandardNET.