lanewillson

A friend recommended this book, and it was a quick read much in the same way a walk through a graveyard is a sprint. It was disturbing on many levels, and forced grappling with the reader’s internal conflict – should I keep reading or simply turn away, whistling and praying that it is all in the imagination. The fundamentalist branch of the Mormon faith isolates itself from the rest of the world, so they are not corrupted. Were the congregants to discover the idea that marrying off their barely adolescent girls is a sick and disgusting proposition, then the churches old men would have no one to marry. Once the revolting mental images have passed the mind’s eye, there is nothing to hide behind, and it takes no time at all to discover the similarities between the Mormons and every other group of humans on the planet.Each of the world’s major religions can look at their history and recognize the shameful elements of their narrative. As a member of the United Methodist Church, I know that a few pastors who set out to face and kill the “savages” , now known as the Native Americans , with the zeal of Buffalo Bill harvesting bison. The north and south versions of the Methodist church, begun prior to the civil war, remained in place until 1938. Racial bigotry and hatred may have changed the vocabulary of the church, patting itself on the back for slavery’s destruction, but tyranny, suspicion, fear, poverty and hatred remain slavery.It is tempting to measure religious beliefs against Mormon theology and breathe a sigh of relief that “at least we’re not as bad as them”. Coming to that conclusion is ultimately to enslave ourselves in man’s inhumanity to man.