Good morning to you all!
Today my friend Chad and I will be attending a Mormon sacrament service. Many of you who have been reading my blog over the weeks are probably aware that we live in Utah, the Mormon capital of the world. Many of you may also know that this was the faith of my childhood. I grew up immersed in the church and Mormon culture, my life was filled with Sunday school activities, caseroles, and various curious forms of Jell-O desserts.
The Mormon Church, also called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or LDS is a relatively young church founded in 1820s by a young man from Upstate New York named Joseph Smith who claimed to have seen two "personages" in the woods one day as he was praying to God asking which church was the true church. These two men, according to the story, were the living bodies of God (Whom they assign the name Elohim), and his son Jesus. To paraphrase, their message to him was that none of the existing churches were true, that they have strayed from the real truth and Joseph would start up a new religion. Later, an angel named Moroni appeared to Joseph in his room explaining to him that somewhere, buried in the woods near his home were a series of artifacts left behind by an ancient historian named, Mormon and his son.
These artifacts included two magical seer stones, the "Urim" and "Thummim" as well as a stack of golden plates, upon which were the writings of a historian named Mormon who recorded the history of his ancient civilization here in North America during the times of Abraham. The book supposedly documented the history and demise of the two main tribes of the Americas, the righteous "Nephites" and the wicked "Lamanites". Native Americans according to this paradigm would have been descended from Jews of Israel, the Lamanites eventually destroyed the Nephites and as punishment God cursed them with red skin and that is how we see the American Indians today, they are the living descendants of the Lamanite tribe.
Joseph would later, at the advice of the angel Moroni, find the plates and use the magical seer stones to translate them from their original text in "Reformed Egyptian" into English then publish it into a book that we now know today as "the Book of Mormon".
So there is a very brief and rough synopsis of the Joseph Smith story, but if you would like to know more about the life of Joseph Smith and the early history of the church, I strongly encourage you all to check out the book No Man Knows My History: the Life of Joseph Smith by Fawn M. Brodie. It is a wonderfully well-written book with tons of resources and an unbiased account of the church and its history as well as an interesting and thorough biography of the founder of the LDS movement, Joseph Smith.
Chad and I figured that if we were going to attend a Mormon Church, then we had better take full advantage of our geography and attend the biggest and most important one around, the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City, right across the street from the SLC Temple.
A quick disclaimer before I go, yes I am an ex-Mormon and yes I do have my reservations about the church, but I am going to do my very best to be fair and even for my analysis. As mentioned in my first entry, this blog is about learning and discovery, not to put down or scoff at any of the people or their religions. However, political positions and social attitudes are fair game. Remember this in the comments section if you please.
With that, I wish you all a wonderful day! Tune in later for my review. I will also be posting my review of the Buddhist temple here soon so be on the look out for that!
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