A Sacrament in Korean

After my previous ranting about doing church on vacation, I can officially call myself a hypocrite! We camped this weekend at an LDS church recreational property. While playing Saturday afternoon in a sports field, we were overrun by Asian men, young and old, playing a rowdy game of soccer.

Before they showed up, our group had nearly had the entire field to ourselves, and felt a little disgruntled about being unceremoniously shuffled to the side for their game. While this was all happening, we groused to each other about the other group, indulging in an easy “us vs. them” commentary. It was an awful thing, as I now look back on it. It is so easy to do with another language and culture.

Behind us, an older Asian lady walked up to observe the game. At this point, my wife struck up a conversation. Ironically, she had been more vocal to me than anyone in the previous sentiment. “Are you with all these guys?” she asked her. The lady spoke up in halting English and explained that the Korean branch got together each year for a big activity and any Korean speaker from up and down the Pacific coast who got word was invited to come camp and have a special sacrament meeting. She then proceeded to invite us to their camp meeting.

It was amazing how a little conversation like that melts away any animosity that may have existed. My wife and I share a love of different cultures and so it was a given that we would then take our children to experience an LDS camp sacrament meeting in Korean. I love explaining to my girls that they would not be able to understand what was being said in the meeting (like Korean is much different for 3 and 5 yr-olds in that regard), but that they should listen carefully for what was said in English. We then became the biggest advocates in our group of skipping the meeting at the branch in town and attending this meeting (in camp attire, no less).

The Sunday meeting was a lesson in sharing of culture in more ways than one. On the one hand we were partaking in a meeting with mostly Korean immigrants and their Americanized children. On the other hand, it was a strictly Mormon affair, replete with testimonies of Joseph Smith, and a distinctly American culture that would erase differences of country and ethnicity. It was truly a one-of-a-kind moment.

I did feel a little angst as I watched these Koreans express their faith in a God that only truly loves you if you believe in a small-time shyster who conned women into screwing him and this sometime megalomaniac who believed every word that came to his mind was directly from God’s mouth. I find it somewhat saddening that they lose some of their culture because they have faith in an American religion that was truly set up for 19th-century frontier Protestant Americans. Frankly, I was surprised there there that many Korean-American Mormons in the Pacific Northwest.

I will be eternally grateful to the lady who invited us to the meeting. When we showed up, she waved us in to be seated at the amphitheater and tenderly held my baby boy during the entire meeting. That was true Christianity.

Doing Church on Vacation

I’m camping this over Memorial Day weekend with a bunch of Mormons. Someone asked when the local branch meets. I was flabbergasted, you are camping, do you REALLY want to expend the effort to clean up you and your kids for something like that?

What is it about Mormons that makes them take a vacation and do church? I mean, I can understand taking a church history-based vacation. I love history and museums, LDS and otherwise, so I am just as likely as the next Mormon to take a trip to Nauvoo or some other church-related site.

But what is it about LDS people that makes them feel obligated to attend church services at a ward they know nothing about, taking 3+ hours of vacation time? And who in their right mind would waste the time to attend a temple session in whatever city they are in? Not only are you standing proxy from some random person, but the only difference between temples is their external appearance! Do you really want to sit and watch that awful 1970’s Adam and Eve movie and have geriatrics grope you for two hours? Don’t you have better things to do?

It’s cool to visit the grounds of a temple, maybe even go inside and wander around for 15 minutes. I think that’s what I would do if ever someone pressured me to waste my vacation time like that.

Some would argue that they receive spiritual elevation from temple attendance. I think that what they are getting is not spiritual elevation, but a sense of arrogance and smugness in their self-righteousness. I would counter that if you need spiritual elevation while on vacation, you have planned a sucky vacation!

Dropping Breadcrumbs

Yesterday, the geriatrics (aka “senior missionaries) at LDS Headquarters in Salt Lake called to find out where my sister is living. She quit attending church after she got divorced years ago.

My wife calls me to ask what to say. This is an interesting development and built upon some groundwork that I had laid a while back. A couple months ago, they called to ask about her brother Steve’s whereabouts. She rolled over on him and gave the information up. In our discussion of it, I somehow got across the point that I think they shouldn’t do that in a manner that didn’t raise hackles on my wife. She knew my opinion of it, so when it came time to do it for someone in my family, she called me!

I let her know that if my sister wanted them to know where she is, she would inform them. I wanted them treated like any other telemarketer, because I really do think they are preying on the gullibility of church members who will trust the Mormon church, no matter what. I can’t believe I ever felt that way!

On another note, a few nights ago, I was reading Todd Compton’s In Sacred Loneliness, and I brought up the fact that Joseph Smith “married” and de-flowered the 14 year-old Helen Mar Kimball. (The girl was then forced to leave behind her childhood crushes and be separated from her peers, without really being able to tell them why. All because of Joseph’s secret. He really was a sick bastard.) My wife was unphased and practically expected such a sordid tale. I mean it IS about equivalent to what the sick assholes in the FLDS Church do and that is splashed all over the TV. So why should it surprise her? Even Oprah is talking about it (which is where my wife gets most of her information anyway)! Plus, now my wife even wants to read the book!

Each of these is a baby step to helping my wife see where I am coming from. It’s like dropping breadcrumbs that she can follow to reach the same conclusion I have come to about the Mormon church.

Mormon Culture Costs and Benefits

I have often thought what real benefits I get by staying active in the church versus what it costs me and my family to stay in. I’ve made the following list, but it seems that each “benefit” should have an asterisk next to it because each of those comes with harmful side effects as well.

Benefits

• Conservative politics (lots of like-minded individuals)
• Family-focused culture protects children from harmful outside influences
• Opportunities for fraternity and friendship
• Unique tribe/culture experience
• Mission experience
• exposure to world/culture
• experience working with/for people
• leadership opportunities (if male)

Costs

• Disengaged members perform jobs poorly
• Friendships are conditional upon church activity
• No community outreach (except for PR reasons)
• “Service” is for members only
• Boring talks/classes and no innovation
• Teaches Book of Mormon/Book of Abraham as literal history
• Only varnished church history is ever presented
• Us vs. them mentality/persecution complex
• 1950’s mentality toward women and minorities
• Women can’t be ward leaders, no recognition for successes
• “Women’s” group is actually headed by men
• Offerings are expensive and oppressive
• Exclusive (not to mention weird) temple ceremonies/weddings
• Pressure to go to extra meetings (temple, leadership meetings, mutual)
• Part member families disdained
• No place for single members
• Too focused on Utah and pioneer history
• White guys from Utah dominate leadership worldwide
• Kooky cosmological doctrines (mostly based on Book of Abraham)
• Mission experience
• indoctrination program to keep young men/women in church
• focus on numbers
• “sells” the Gospel like a peddler
• not focussed on humane service and real community needs

The sick thing is that most, if not all the benefits could be achieved through another group. If I didn’t know it would cause major riffs with family members, I might walk away with my whole family today.

This is so fucking depressing. I feel so stuck and alone. I wish I could tell my wife how I really feel, but I am sure that our relationship is mostly dependent on being in the church and that it would completely fall apart without it. She judges non-members and lapsed members like her brothers through such a harsh prism, I am afraid that someone even closer like me would be slaughtered in a bloodbath if I ever revealed the depth of my heresy!

How to be a perfect Mormon

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much Mormon culture invades one’s private life. It sometimes feels as though there is a never-ending checklist of items to complete. Failure to complete these things is seen by most Mormons as the failure to fully live their religion. Yet few, if any have any real sense of self-improvement associated with them. Most are peripheral items that have a net effect of inducing guilt and a sense of inadequacy.

It is no wonder that I hate the checklist mentality that goes along with being a Mormon. I most hate being ON someone’s checklist and the formality that goes along with it. So I thought I’d create a checklist of all that it takes to do it “right”.

Perfect Mormon CheckList

Do List:

• Attend meetings each Sunday, three hours plus travel and preparation time
• Home teaching (with partner) once a month, one hour per family
• Visiting teaching (with partner) once a month, one hour per family
• One temple session once a month, three hours plus travel and preparation time
• Family Home Evening each Monday, one hour
• Serve in a calling each week (requires extra meetings or preparation time), a least one hour
• Read scriptures (especially Book of Mormon) daily
• Family prayer each day
• Personal prayer day and night
• Couple prayer each day
• Prayers over meals
• Pay 10% tithing (probably gross, but who knows?)
• Purchase and store one year stock of food
• Wear white shirt, tie (and suit jacket) to church meetings
• Attend or take kids to Mutual
• Support ward activities by attending
• Watch General Conference biannually, 8-12 hours each conference

Don’t List:

• No activities on Sunday
• No activities on Monday night
• No activities on Mutual night
• No women working outside home
• No growing facial hair (for men, heh)
• No socializing outside ward boundaries
• No criticism of leaders

Jeez. We really are a peculiar people…

Update 05-12-2008

I posted this over at NOM and got a few more that I can’t believe I forgot…

• Genealogy work
• PPI/VT interviews
• Take your turn cleaning the chapel
• Pay fast offerings
• Fast once a month
• Bear your testimony regularly (even if you don’t have one – BKP)
  
• Go on a mission (if male)
  
• Marry young and have lots of children
  
• Raise them all in the church to do all of the above, plus anything else the GA’s happen to come up with now and in the future
• Wear garments night and day. FOREVER.