Except for one brief yearlong stint in Texas, for the last 33 years I have lived in Utah surrounded by Mormons. I have been to their funerals and wedding receptions, and their missionary homecomings. I have been to their homes for dinner, including those of bishops. Before I met Mrs. Brown, I dated plenty of Mormon women. Have I read the Book of Mormon? Yes, I have read it, believe it or not. I ended up reading it while I was a chaplain intern in Salt Lake City because the majority of the patients I saw were LDS.
Before LDS men were permitted to sport facial hair, I used to joke that I could “pass” for Mormon until I grew my beard.
Because the ownership of the radio station was LDS, in a predominantly LDS community, it fell upon me to ensure that General Conference was broadcast to the faithful. It was a job I had to do for years, and now, when the missionaries show up at my front door, I confidently inform them that I have sat through more General Conference sessions than they have. And I have, as a matter of fact. If the weather is cold, we may invite them in out of the chill or chat with them on the front porch. Sometimes, we give them a dozen eggs from the chickens out back and send them on their way.
I’m thinking of hanging up a sign on my front door:
It’s nice to meet you.
We’re not going to convert.
We’re never going to convert.
If we were going to convert, we would have done so by now.
I’m grilling out back. If you would like a burger and a dozen eggs, please knock.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
A clutch of missionaries showed up at the door on Friday afternoon. I had a column that was overdue, the grass needed to be cut, our printer had stopped working, I had mountains of paperwork to deal with, and I needed to reach out to about five customers. So when the knock came at the door, my working vocabulary at that moment consisted of words I am not allowed to write here, or PJ will be demonetized. All I had time for at the moment was, “Now’s a bad time, boys.”
In retrospect, maybe I should have shoved some eggs out the front door.
Door-to-door proselytizing is part of the LDS faith. After all:
The Mormons think I should be Mormon.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses think I should be a JW.
The evangelicals think I should be their brand of evangelical.
The Catholics think I should be Catholic.
The Episcopalians think I should put on a dress and call myself “Linda,” but that is a whole other column.
By the time the dust settled, Mrs. Brown and I were chrismated into the Greek Orthodox Church. So there.
If you are not in the majority in Utah, chances are excellent that you have had a negative experience with the LDS Church and its members. Maybe even more than one. I’ve had them, and so has Mrs. Brown. Most non-members have had them, and there are YouTube channels and podcasts by ex-Mormons who take the church to task on a regular basis. And, perhaps to the chagrin of any LDS readers, I am not going to belittle or dismiss those people’s experiences.
Yes, the LDS Church has some bills to pay, and there are members who use their faith as a justification for all sorts of things. But the same attitude can be found in the Roman Catholic Church and in any branch of Protestantism. The same can certainly be said for atheists.
Multiple sources are reporting that Thomas Jacob Sanford had a particular hatred for the LDS Church. He referred to the church as “the antichrist," and you can read more about that here and here, if you are so inclined. He also had brushes the law prior to Sunday. He also reportedly had a relationship with an LDS woman when he lived in the Beehive State. Well, before I got married, I had relationships with LDS women, and I have lived here for a long time. I happen to like my LDS neighbors, and I hope they like me.
Sanford may have been driven by a hatred for the LDS Church, but I also suspect his actions on Sunday were also part of another day of the world going mad. In recent years, the country has fooled around with lifting the lid on Pandora’s Box and letting the demons out to play. Sometimes, those demons erupt in rioting and looting. Sometimes, they come out in people who gun down other people and set fire to churches. There are forces at home and abroad that have played with that lid so many times that it just does not fit anymore. It has become easier and easier to act on impulse. Sanford might have hated the LDS Church, but he also lived in a world in which people deal with their demons and forces that they may not even understand by engaging in violence. It’s going to take a long time to get that lid back on.
I have also heard that some have taken this attack as an opportunity to chide the LDS Church for its doctrines and practices. Now is not the time. Yes, to someone of another faith, the tenets of the church can seem a little odd. We look just as odd to them, I assure you.
Looking at the LDS Church from a distance, it is easy to judge its members by their practices and beliefs, which seem incredulous. It is another thing to live among them for three decades, break bread with them, exchange Christmas gifts, and shoot the breeze on a Saturday morning at Lowe's. It is another thing to go to their birthday parties and life events.
The opposition, whether it involves earthbound or spiritual forces, seeks to keep us at a distance from one another. Those forces want us to talk about how different and strange the others are. The last thing those forces want is for us to cross cultural and religious lines. They win through fracturing people. They will settle for us being suspicious of one another, but they would love to see us at each other’s throats. Those forces would hate to see us discover that we have more in common than not.
So to everyone, LDS or not, we can argue doctrine when there is not a shadow upon the world. Right now, if we come together and eschew the lesser demons for our better angels, we may actually stand a chance.
