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gdm-digest         Wednesday, December 1 1999         Volume 02 : Number 017




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Date: Sun, 28 Nov 1999 23:10:18 -0700
From: "Perry L. Porter" <plporter@pobox.com>
Subject: ---> MORMON AMERICA; By Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling

MORMON AMERICA; By Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling

LA TIMES : Sunday, November 28, 1999 

www.calendarlive.com/calendarlive/books/bookreview/19991128/t000108316.html


'A Pecular People' The Mystical and Pragmatic Appeal of Mormonism

By KENNETH ANDERSON


I-
* * *

Accounts of Mormons and the Mormon Church--officially the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints--tend toward one of two extremes. On the one
hand, accounts of Mormonism from the church's founding by Joseph Smith in
the 1820s have emphasized the sensational, the lurid, the scandalous, the
heretical and the titillating, for the reason that, well, there is much in
Mormon history, culture and doctrine that is sensational, lurid,
scandalous, heretical and titillating, as measured against mainstream
American culture then and now. Mormons had (and some dissident Mormons
still have) lots of wives; they do not smoke or drink or even drink
coffee; the genuinely devout ones wear funny underwear and do strange
rituals in temples closed to outsiders; Mormonism's presumably deeply
oppressed women bear an unfashionably large number of children, and up
until just a couple of decades ago, the Mormon Church denied blacks full
participation in the church. From the 19th century down to the present
day, Mormonism has succeeded in pushing American society's hot-buttons on
religion, race and sex.

On the other hand, other accounts of Mormons--accounts of the people
rather than the articles of their strange faith--have often emphasized the
cheerful virtue, the upright and yet often relaxed, pragmatic goodness of
its adherents, their ability to hold together families and raise decent
children and provide the consolations of community in the confusing modern
world more successfully than many others. These accounts often pass over
in discreet silence the sometimes embarrassing tenets of faith that,
especially if one were Mormon, might have been thought an inestimably
important part of making that moral success possible. If opponents of
Mormonism have often asked, "Can't we stop the Mormons from being
Mormon?", ostensible admirers of Mormons as people have often asked, at
least by implication, "Can't we have Mormons--but without Mormonism?" This
is a circumstance not unknown to minority religions with their peculiar
beliefs and customs. But Mormonism is unique in this country's historical
experience for being so thoroughly American--deeply intertwined with the
history of the United States, especially the West--yet with enough
deviation that it becomes more jarring than a religion genuinely alien to
American culture. For that reason, Mormons and the Mormon Church have
reason to be glad that Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling's new book,
"Mormon America," succumbs to neither extreme in reporting on Mormonism.
The Ostlings (the co-authors are husband and wife, both journalists and
non-Mormons; Richard Ostling was a long-time religion reporter for Time
magazine) have succeeded splendidly in their aim to produce a "candid but
non-polemical overview written for non-Mormons and Mormons alike, focusing
on what is distinctive and culturally significant about this growing
American movement." It is a scrupulous, fair-minded account, one that
neither shies away from the controversies that have shaped the perception
of Mormonism nor has any particular ax to grind about them.

I say this as a lapsed, inactive Mormon, someone who was raised in a
devoutly Mormon home and many years ago served a two-year mission for the
church, someone who today is non-practicing, although fundamentally
sympathetic to the church and its culture (this bit of autobiography is
important in a field in which so many commentators bring agendas, hidden
and otherwise). I object to accounts that caricature or pathologize
Mormonism--starting with what much of educated America today takes as its
source book for Mormonism, Tony Kushner's "Angels in America"--even if I
do not find enough in the doctrine that I could believe to count myself a
practicing adherent. But reading "Mormon America," even with my faculties
for detecting patronization and pathologization turned up high, I found
the book remarkably careful, fair and untendentious. Whether the Mormon
Church and its hierarchy will find it so I am unsure; in dealing with many
things in Mormon history and culture, it has seemed simply to hope that if
no one discusses them, they will go away. Of course they do not, and
"Mormon America" is a useful introduction to the Mormon Church even from
the church's point of view because it discusses scandal and controversy in
a plain, unadorned fashion with none of the prickly defensiveness
alternating with spin-doctor insincerity--what the Ostlings aptly call
"isolationist, and defensive reactions to outsiders"--that, alas,
regularly afflicts the Mormon Church's own department of public relations.

II-
* * * 

And matters of scandal, controversy and embarrassment abound. The
religious claims could be considered embarrassing enough, starting with
Joseph Smith's founding vision in which, he said, he was visited by God
the Father and Jesus Christ in a grove in upstate New York, followed by
slews of angels from on high, naming Smith as the person to reestablish
Christ's church on Earth in "these latter days." Nonbelievers, religious
or irreligious, will find these claims preposterous. Yet they are not, it
should be noted, different from the mystical claims of visions and
revelations and visitations made by innumerable Christian and other
mystics across history, which are always preposterous to unbelievers; I
find accounts of visitations by the Virgin Mary, for example, as absurd as
any Catholic must find Joseph Smith's accounts. But the fact that so much
of the foundational mysticism of Christianity is alleged to have taken
place in the suitably distant past gives it no greater respectability than
Smith's more recent claims.

It is not mysticism, recent or distant, whether in Joseph Smith's visions
or St. Paul's hearing a voice, that creates special problems for Mormon
religious belief. A much more intractable problem is that Joseph Smith's
claims go far beyond the mystical to claims of fact which ultimately are
historical. The Book of Mormon, for example, the first work of Mormon
scripture, purports to be a historically true account of pre-Columbian
people in the New World; it teaches that they were part of the Lost Tribes
of Israel who were visited and converted in America by the resurrected
Jesus. As a matter of Christian doctrine--leaving aside the peculiarity of
the geographical location of its story--the book's content amounts to a
fairly traditional call for reform of Christ's church. It is all about
faith, repentance and baptism and has little to say about the later,
vastly more radical religious doctrines Smith preached, such as polygamy
and the plurality of Gods, the idea of a Mother in Heaven (accepted from
the church's earliest days in principle, although calls by Mormon
feminists to recognize prayers to her constitute apostasy in the view of
the church hierarchy) and the defining doctrine of Mormonism today, that
human beings may individually progress in goodness and knowledge
themselves to become gods.

The Book of Mormon also says that Native Americans resulted from a final
ethnic war among those people; that they were cursed by God with a dark
skin, although the book promises their eventual blessing and return to
God. Curiously, the offensiveness to today's ears of such a teaching--the
Mormon Church has been quietly and systematically excising the most
egregious of those scriptural passages in recent years--is not the only
reading these passages of the Book of Mormon have been given. In the
1980s' El Salvador war, for example, guerrilla forces were reported to
have included at least a few indigenous Mormons who--quite contrary to the
official Mormon Church--had taken those scriptural verses as evidence of
having been blessed by God in a just war against white oppression. I
recall speaking with a couple of indigenous Mormons in El Salvador in
those years--rural political supporters of the guerrillas although not
themselves fighters. What they emphasized in their reading of Mormon
scripture was a deep satisfaction that, at last, here was a religion that
thought them important enough to have been visited by the risen Christ,
not merely relying on events in faraway Palestine. It seemed to me then,
as now, no worse an ethnic creation myth than what contemporary makers of
myths of indigenismo, the Rigoberta Menchus and so on, elaborate, and who
anyway ultimately rely in their narratives on various white American and
European romanticisms about revolution and armed struggle or the supposed
eco-awareness of indigenous culture or New Age presumptions of Native
American spirituality.

The underlying problem, however, is that, notwithstanding the heroic
efforts of devout Mormon scholars, researchers and scientists, evidence is
not exactly mounting to support the Book of Mormon as a genuinely ancient
document. Nor is it safely off in realms beyond proof and disproof, the
stuff of mysticism, in the way that most religions are careful to do in
the face of rational science. It purports to be the historical fact of the
world--one of numerous claims by Smith and early Mormons that could not be
disputed at the time but that in today's world appear in trouble on the
facts.

III-
* * * 

The problem of the Book of Mormon for devout believers illustrates why,
within Mormonism, the relevant subject, the most threatening subject, is
history and not theology. A religion that has made, so to speak, many
seemingly rash claims about historical matters is specially liable to
assault from the discipline of history; likewise, too, a religion that has
with scandal and controversy in its past but that also has made a
concerted attempt over decades to scrub and polish and airbrush away that
past in the interests of achieving respectability must worry about prying
historians. To a significant extent, historians with sufficient interest
in undertaking these questions of early Mormon practices, sources and
doctrines have themselves been Mormon. They have been caught, however,
between a genuinely deeply held Mormon theological principle that the
advancement of all knowledge is to grow closer to the glory of God and the
institutional church's awareness that history is dangerous. "Mormon
America" cites perhaps the most reactionary of the Mormon senior leaders,
Boyd K. Packer, who said in 1981 that "the writer or teacher who has an
exaggerated loyalty to the theory that everything must be told is laying a
foundation for his own judgment. . . . [S]ome things are to be taught
selectively and some things are to be given only to those who are worthy."
Notwithstanding this troubling tension, these Mormon historians' inquiries
have taken them into the roots of Joseph Smith's beliefs in magic, sources
of Mormon temple ceremonies in Masonic rites, male bonding among early
Mormon leaders, the role and status of women in the early Mormon Church
and, of course, polygamy. As might be expected, their findings and
conclusions have not always been congenial to the church, especially
insofar as those findings have been deployed by the (very tiny) band of
Mormon intellectuals and--sometimes the same people but not always--social
activists who would like to reform the Mormon Church, particularly in
matters of gender and sexual orientation. The church has reacted sharply
in the last decade by removing various of them from teaching posts and
excommunicating them. The Ostlings document these struggles with admirable
dispassion, understanding fully, as everyone involved does, that an
institution that has constructed so elaborately a sanitized past for
itself is likely to continue to find itself discomfited by history.

I sometimes wonder if I might have remained a moderately devout Mormon had
I done what I suspect many educated Mormons actually do in the face of
uncomfortable historical evidence, which is to conclude implicitly--very
implicitly--that none of this matters in its literal truth or falsity.
What matters is the evolving institution of the church and particularly
its modernization and globalization; let us not be disposed, in other
words, to throw the baby out with the bathwater over such quibbles as
whether there really were horse-drawn chariots in pre-Columbian America or
to what extent Joseph Smith drew his conceptions of Mormon temple
ceremonies out of Freemasonry. Perhaps the spiritually mature way to deal
with these things is to do as all religionists have done over the
centuries when confronted with inconvenient facts: Undertake a strategic
retreat into an un-disprovable mysticism that protects both the religious
institution and the possibility of spirituality as a higher, indispensable
value. I have no quarrel with mysticism, but it is problematic for Mormon
theology in a way more pronounced than for many other religions.

IV-
* * * 

A Mormon withdrawal into mysticism is made difficult by the fact that the
theology of Joseph Smith and his successors, such as Brigham Young, is not
in its form of expression, mystical. On the contrary, the immense
spiritual attraction of Mormonism's doctrines--particularly on the eternal
nature of families, the essential goodness of human beings and the idea of
eternal progression--is precisely that however mystical they might
ultimately be as ideas, they are presented and understood within Mormon
life as preeminently reasonable. The tone of the early Mormon prophets
even when speaking of the most astonishing doctrines never has the
mystical quality of, say, a St. Teresa; rather it is always marked by a
reasonableness, a common sense quality that locates it--in discursive tone
if not precisely in substance--firmly within the Enlightenment. It
deliberately invites judgment on reasonable, rational grounds; it appeals
to the faculty of natural reason.

This peculiar commingling of mystical (as well as historically
unsupported) doctrines on the one hand and pragmatic rationality on the
other is a strong feature of contemporary Mormons as individuals. Educated
Mormon culture has long been characterized, for example, by outstanding
physical scientists and engineers, as strictly rational as possible in
their worldly work yet devout in their adherence to many historical
beliefs that would not pass the test of rational science, and believers,
moreover, in deeply mystical ideas, even if they would not represent them
as such. My own father spent his career as a chemistry professor and
university dean, a dedicated and rational teacher of science. Yet in the
Mormon Church his function--in a church staffed by lay clergy--for many
years has been to deliver blessings, to put his hands on the heads of
church members and tell them things as moved by God, which are recorded,
transcribed and kept by the church member as a meditative guide to God's
intentions for him or her in life. Surely, to an outsider, this is very
close to wild mysticism, yet my father is far indeed from being a wild
mystic. Nor is it that he bifurcates his rational life from this mystical
experience and has some sort of existential disconnect between them. On
the contrary, his experience of giving these Mormon blessings is that the
process of "following the spirit" is itself "reasonable," in a way that is
highly characteristic of the Mormon trait of perceiving mysticism as
rational practice.

This ability to wrap a mystical worldview in Enlightenment language of
reasonableness and rationality has, however, an important consequence for
the tasks of modernization and globalization that the contemporary Mormon
Church has set for itself. The very fact that doctrines and views that the
church itself wants to reform are already expressed in a language of utter
reasonableness and rationality makes it considerably harder--not
impossible, but harder--to jettison or reform them also in the language of
reason and rationality; one is, so to speak, deprived of the tool of
language as a tool of modernization because one has already used it as the
tool of that which one wants to modernize. Vatican II, by contrast, had an
unreformed practice and a hitherto under-deployed language of modernist
reform at its disposal, which made the task of reform greatly easier, if
only by clarifying what was old and what was new. The Ostlings make very
clear that the institutional Mormon Church has, by its own standards,
undertaken a deliberate march toward modernization even if it cannot quite
characterize it as such; yet the unreformed church has long been set in
its ways in a modernizing language.

In a hierarchical church, in which authority comes from the top down, this
may not seem an important consideration. If the hierarchy seeks to
modernize the church, to get rid of old and embarrassing and disreputable
doctrines, then it seems self-evident that it can simply do so and the
faithful will follow. What matters to Mormons is their "living prophet";
the Ostlings are correct to quote the late Mormon Church president and
prophet Ezra Taft Benson that "a living prophet trumps dead ones." But
when the institution is a church and a religion, then the rhetorical tools
by which that trump is played matter a great deal. It matters whether the
tools of modernizing language have in some sense already been used and
used up; for the attempt to reuse them inevitably raises questions of
authenticity and legitimacy, even in a religion which prizes obedience
above everything else.

And rhetoric matters especially, one might think, in a church which
purports to operate by direct, divine revelation. A belief in direct,
divine revelation has the virtue of allowing great flexibility at critical
moments, as when the early Mormon prophet Wilford Woodruff announced by
divine revelation in 1890 the abandonment of polygamy following the
passage of draconian federal laws--some of the most radically unjust in
the history of the republic--dissolving the Mormon Church. But it also
means that the Mormon Church does not have available to it, for example,
Catholicism's post-Vatican II understanding that the Catholic Church is a
"pilgrim" church, seeking with deep humility a partly hidden and uncertain
path through the world; Mormons may individually have the virtue of
humility, but the Mormon Church as an institution does not. The Ostlings
cite a commonly held Mormon view that "some may see change in the
teachings and practices [of the church] as an inconsistency or weakness,
but to Latter-day Saints change is a sign of the very foundation of
strength," viz., that a "living prophet" guides the church according to
God's will. But of course this reflects a certain amount of nervous
bravado because all it means is that neither consistency nor inconsistency
with past doctrines constitutes evidence of anything. Plainly, among
Mormons and their leaders, a certain anxiety and a certain lurking concern
for inauthenticity and illegitimacy--has the all-knowing God really
changed His mind or was it just His leaders?--remains, even with the
implicit acceptance that what really matters is not doctrine for its own
sake but the forward march of the corporate church.

V-
* * * 

Questions of authenticity and legitimacy in the march toward change are
most evident at the fringes of the Mormon world. By and large Mormons
worldwide are happy--relieved even more, perhaps--with the tendency of the
church to draw itself more into the mainstream of Christian denominations
and to simplify, rather than complicate, the theology in order to make it
more universally appealing to populations around the world. In no matter
was this modernization of greater relief than the final abandonment in the
1970s by the Mormon Church of its official racism, its refusal to allow
blacks full standing in the church. (Historically the Mormon Church's
position was complicated; despite the theological racism, the church was
anti-slavery, and the antebellum presence of sizable numbers of
nonslaveholding Mormons in uneasily pro-slavery Missouri was one of many
reasons Mormons had troubles with their non-Mormon neighbors. Joseph Smith
himself favored the "return to Africa" movement that off and on attracted
some followers, black and white.) The Mormon Church was far later
desegregating than other American churches, in part because the doctrine
was not one of a separate but equal, segregated social order merely but
one of actual theology and doctrine. It is possible to speculate that an
ordinarily very Mormon language of pragmatic, natural reason was not as
readily available as it might have been as an internally legitimate ground
of appeal against racism because it had already been elaborately deployed
to the ends of racist theology. And this cost the Mormon Church decades
not merely in desegregating but in carrying its worldwide mission to
Africa and elsewhere--although as the Ostlings observe, it is rapidly
making up for lost time in places like the South African townships while
hoping against hope that over time the ugly, embarrassing racism of its
early theology will be quietly forgotten.

The Ostlings document very well, however, that resistance to the march by
the institutional church toward mainstream Christianity and reform has
produced at least a small wave of reaction, something that has come to be
called "Mormon fundamentalism." Mormon fundamentalism is characterized by
a return to the defining feature of early Mormonism, at least in the eyes
of the world: polygamy. The attitude of mainstream Mormons toward polygamy
is much more complicated than libertarians or liberal do-gooders or
conservative Christians have any idea. On the one hand, although Mormons
often find it embarrassing to talk about, they--we--are certainly not
ashamed of it. The Utah elites that run the Mormon Church, after all, are
its descendants. On the other hand, there is complete acceptance that,
whatever its theological status in the hereafter, it is gone for good in
the temporal world. If mainstream Mormons are not alien to the idea of
polygamy because some of them are descended from polygamists, they are no
more comfortable with it in today's world than are their suburban
neighbors. Among the millions of converts worldwide who will soon
constitute the majority of Mormons, it is a dead letter, a matter of the
distant Utah past. However much polygamy, through various breakaway Mormon
sects, may wind up on the daytime TV talk shows, it has little to do with
contemporary worldwide Mormonism. Still, as "Mormon America" correctly
notes, Mormon fundamentalism and its polygamy are here to stay, and no
matter how much the official Mormon Church seeks to separate itself from
today's polygamy by excommunication or other means of ostracism, it will
inevitably be associated with Mormonism.

While making Mormonism mainstream and "respectable" within the culture of
suburbia has provoked reaction and radicalism, Mormonism has also
experienced the growth of another modestly disaffected group, a small but
growing body of intellectuals within Mormonism who experience these days
what the Ostlings describe as "palpable worry and alienation." It is,
however, important, as the Ostlings observe, not to overestimate the
relevance of this intellectual class and its discontents to the Mormon
Church just because it is a group which naturally tugs at the heartstrings
of intellectuals, writers and journalists outside the church. After all,
church discipline in the 1990s aimed at purging Mormon dissident
intellectuals, as "Mormon America" says, "barely registered on the Richter
scale" of reaction among the church's rank and file.

These Mormon intellectuals tend to exhibit two characteristics in their
relationship with the church. First, dissenting Mormon intellectuals
sometimes appear simply to wish that Mormonism, with the help of a few
opportune divine revelations, would take on all the elements of
contemporary liberal culture that befit the social and cultural mores of
contemporary liberal intellectuals who also happen to be Mormon--broadly
speaking, the political and social views of the National Public Radio
constituency, on abortion, feminism, gay rights, the environment, race and
ethnicity in America and so on. In that respect, at least, Mormon
intellectual dissenters sometimes resemble those ostensible friends of the
Mormon people who wish that they could have Mormons without Mormonism.
Second, however, increasingly what characterizes Mormon intellectuals is
that, although sometimes dissenting, they desire deeply to stay Mormon, to
raise their children as Mormon and to stay within the church. Although
church authorities deny that there can be within Mormonism a "loyal
opposition," an intelligentsia that is able to express itself within a
certain range of tolerance of opinion, as a counterpoint to blind
obedience to the church hierarchy, in fact it is an indication of the
growing intellectual and moral confidence of Mormonism that its
intellectuals do not simply drift away--I suppose I am a minor case in
point of drift--rather than remaining to dissent. I do not suppose that
the Mormon Church hierarchy will recognize it as such, but the fact of
intellectuals remaining to dissent indicates some success in the
modernization march that the church has undertaken; there is something
spiritually there that even those who have all the resources of secular
intellectualism at their disposal find they are invested in and are not
willing simply to give up and walk away from, not even when pushed. It
ought to be, in fact, some small source of pride to the institutional
Mormon Church.

Yet dissent will always remain difficult in a church devoted to obedience,
and the Mormon Church is not about to go so mainstream that it adopts
Protestant doctrines of the primacy of conscience over obedience to
religious hierarchy. And it is, after all, incumbent on dissident Mormon
intellectuals to recognize that the process of modernization does not
necessarily mean becoming secular liberals and that the function of change
in the Mormon Church is not, at bottom, to make the lives of those drawn
to secular intellectual culture indistinguishable from those of their
secular friends. It is, rather, to promote a singular vision of the
kingdom of God, and in that endeavor, whether ultimately it admits of
prayers to a Mother in Heaven or a hundred other things that would put
Mormonism on the cutting edge of secular ideology, it is certain that
Mormons will remain what they always have been, as God in Mormon scripture
describes them: a "peculiar people." - - -

Kenneth Anderson Teaches at American University Law School, Washington,
D.c., and Is Legal Editor of "Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know."


Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times

Search the archives of the Los Angeles Times for similar stories.

You will not be charged to look for stories, only to retrieve one.


- -----------------

[Someone reliable,  told me that :The review is by Kenneth Anderson, a
member of the faculty of American University Law School in Washington DC.
(he is a "lapsed inactive Mormon." )]



Perry     <plporter@pobox.com>    http://pobox.com/~plporter

- -

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1999 21:59:19 -0700
From: "Perry L. Porter" <plporter@pobox.com>
Subject: ---> Passive Aggression and the Believer

http://bioag.byu.edu/zoology/bioethics/passiveagg.htm


Passive Aggression and the Believer
K-Lynn Paul

Dialogue, Vol.10, No.4, p.86

A Priesthood group of six was contemplating an activity proposed by the
group leader. One member objected, but the remaining five supported the
proposal so enthusiastically that it was scheduled for the following
Saturday. When the day arrived, the objector was the only one to attend.
Why do people give lip service to Church principles, practices and
programs, but by their actions disavow them? Why do people accept callings
or responsibilities in the Church and then make only token attempts to
fulfill them-- or fail to fulfill them altogether?

Many reasons have been suggested, but to my knowledge one fundamental
explanation has been overlooked: "Passive- aggression," a psychiatric
term, defined as the use of such means as obstructionism, pouting,
procrastination, intentional inefficiency, or stubbornness to reflect the
disagreement or hostility one dares not express openly. Often directed
toward individuals or institutions upon which a person is over- dependent,
it is one of the more widespread phenomena observed by mental health
professionals.

Typical examples include the alcoholic, who when angry at boss or spouse
does not speak up, but who retaliates indirectly by getting drunk; the
wife whose anger at her husband takes the form of indifference; the
husband who refuses to discuss mutual problems with his wife; the wife who
becomes "sick" the day her husband had planned to go fishing; and the
husband who, unhappy with his family relationships, pursues a hobby to
their neglect. These passive means really communicate the same message as
open active disagreement or conflict. But unlike open disagreement, these
methods cannot solve problems because the problems are not brought into
the open.

Most well-adjusted people use passive-aggression occasionally, for
example, in social settings where one may act "politely" interested, with
no intention of following up a suggestion. However, those who use
passive-aggression extensively are considered to have a chronically
maladaptive and self- defeating "personality disorder."

Among church members passive-aggression affects such areas as marriage and
parent-child relationships as well as member- church and leader-follower
relationships. In marriage passive- aggression can be particularly
devastating when spouses react against each other rather than discuss and
work out differences. When parents treat each other passive-aggressively,
their children too learn this method for handling family problems. The
tendency may learn be passed on from generation to generation.

In the family a small child may dawdle when his parents are in a hurry,
keep his room messy when his parents are perfectionistic housecleaners, or
"forget" what he is continually told to do. A teenager may patiently
listen to his parents, nod in agreement and mumble, "Sure, Dad," and then
go out and do exactly the opposite. He may have learned by experience that
it is useless to try to communicate or that an attempt will be made to
dissuade him from his true feelings. In some families where the policy is
to avoid confrontation at all costs, passive- aggression is the only
recourse. Individuals with this background often conceive of anger only in
terms of top-blowing like a volcanic eruption, and are unaware that anger
can be expressed in such useful ways as self-assertion or in the defense
of one's rights.

Within the Church, a person may accept a position and then fail to fulfill
it, or he may agree to attend a function and then fail to do so--without
notifying anyone--often rationalizing his absence by minor medical
complaints. Of course failure to attend a function after agreeing to come
does not automatically imply passive-aggression. A person can have a
legitimate excuse or he may simply be living such a chaotic life, that he
does not know from day to day what he will be able to do. But when
passive- aggression is present, it can be dealt with directly only when it
is recognized by leaders. For example, if a church member states that he
feels certain meetings are unnecessary and that his only purpose in
attending them is for the "body count," he may be viewed as hostile to the
Church. If, however, he says, "I'll be there," and then when questioned
later about his absence reports, "I just couldn't make it," the leader may
think he needs to be lectured on the importance of the particular meeting.
After hearing the lecture he returns good standing by saying, "I'll try
harder next time." But next time may never come. Or he may actually go to
the meeting in question but slack off somewhere else.

Why is it necessary to be passive-aggressive if one does not wish to
attend some function or hold a certain job? Having heard such axioms as,
"One should never turn down a church calling," members in many cases do
not feel that they have the option to say, "No." One sister finally
accepted a position she did not want as the Friend representative because
she was told, "You have to have a church job." When she made no effort to
sell subscriptions, she was told she would "be happy and get blessings" if
she did. Therefore she went through the motions, but passive-aggressively
undermined what she was doing with the statement, "I really don't think
it's as good as another children's magazine I know of." If members could
say no without being considered bad people or without having to carry a
burden of guilt, church leaders could honestly work out with each member
what is expected of him and what he will do.

Members who have testimonies, but who do not fully accept a specific
church policy or procedure, often eventually resort to passive-aggression.
The person who speaks out with constructive criticism frequently finds
himself lumped in the category of "fault-finder," "backbiter" or
"nonbeliever." Some church leaders are prone to view all criticism as a
threat. They often appear unable or unwilling to differentiate between the
person who offers a constructive criticism in the hope that the Church can
better fulfill its purpose, and the chronic complainer who finds fault
with everything his Bishop or the Church says or does. When an individual
does find his constructive criticism viewed as a threat and hears himself
denounced or otherwise put down, he may feel that he has no recourse but
to speak only to sympathetic soulmates or to resist passively. The local
authority, in his self-perceived role of exhorter and encourager, may view
such a person as someone who needs to be "worked with." In cases of true
need, however, encouragement helps. But if the person is passively
resisting, this response may only solidify his resistance.

A particular problem occurs when a husband or a wife has such a demanding
church job that the spouse becomes frustrated because the partner is gone
from home so much. He or she cannot speak to the brethren because they
were the ones who made the call and are probably so overworked themselves
that the complainer would feel guilty. He or she cannot speak directly to
the partner as this would not be supporting the calling. At this point
some spouses may become unconsciously hostile, with the hostility cropping
out in little ways--subtle nagging about unrelated topics, greater
irritability with the children or even lack of affection. Others may
simply become too frustrated to handle all of the added responsibilities
without support from the absent mate.

How prevalent is passive-aggression among church members? While it will
vary according to circumstance and locality, some examples may give some
idea of the extent to which it pervades the Church. In Sunday School a
teacher may ask, "And what happened to Joseph Smith in 1820?" A question
like this one may be appropriate for the investigator class or the Junior
Sunday School, but not for the regular teenage or adult classes. Does
anyone say, "Look, don't ask us such obvious questions"? No, people
respond passively with a long period of silence, until someone finally
recites the answer so the class can move on. Perhaps courtesy is coupled
with passive-aggression in this example. However, in similar classes,
youth may sit with glazed eyes, tuning out what is said, or occasionally
regurgitating a stock answer--and then go out and live as though the
Gospel has no part in their lives.

Home teachers procrastinate to the end of the month in spite of all
encouragement to the contrary. Members never quite get to their genealogy.
Occasionally a non-member or an inactive husband becomes
passive-aggressive. Knowing that, more than anything else, his wife would
like to have him active in the Church, he may resist as a
passive-aggressive way of getting back at her-- perhaps because of some
unrelated grievance or problem in the marriage.

In the mission field missionaries used to be instructed to pressure their
contacts with such questions as, "Now Mr. Brown, is there any good reason
you can't be in Church next Sunday?" Questions were worded so that people
could not easily say no. Missionaries found people making appointments for
discussions and then leaving home rather than feeling free to state openly
that they were not interested in the Gospel. Baptism dates were supposed
to be set on the first discussion, regardless of whether it was
appropriate for the particular contact involved, with the result that many
members were afraid to refer their friends to the missionaries.
Missionaries could not disagree with these instructions from above and so
either had to follow them or resist passively.

Believing as we do in inspired leaders, it still can be difficult to tell
where Gospel principles end and leaders' personal views begin,
particularly when the latter are preached from the pulpit. Often I think
it is hard for the leaders themselves to distinguish which is which.
Leaders are prone to view a disagreement with their personal views as a
rebellious attack upon the Church. So members keep their own counsel and
do as they think best. Nowhere is this more prevalent than on the subject
of birth control. More members practice birth control than publicly
advocate it. It is instructive to observe the transition in attitude which
occurs in the young couple, first loudly promulgating the view expressed
by some authorities, and then moderating their view as they have four,
five or six children in as many years. Suddenly the couple stops having
children, even though the wife has ten to fifteen reproductive years left!

Just why is passive-aggression a problem to the Church and its members?
First, the strength of the organization is sapped when leaders never know
when they can count on people to fulfill their responsibilities. The
quality of a church function is lowered when a teacher does not appear and
some unprepared person must pinch-hit. The enthusiasm of members is sapped
when they feel self-expression is futile.

Second, and perhaps even more important, is that the strength of character
of individuals within the Church is jeopardized. Passive-aggressive
individuals seldom live up to their potential when they are
passive-aggressive from their upbringing or when they become that way as a
result of conditions within the Church. It is ironic that the very
qualities of character which led people out of their former religions into
the light of the Gospel--such qualities as willingness to express
dissatisfaction, to question authority and refusal to accept doctrines
that appear unreasonable--are felt to be suspect if they are manifested in
the members. And yet it does seem at times that some would prefer to
prevent the probing, analyzing, questioning and discussing that are for
many the means to the understanding of Gospel principles.

What are some of the causes of passive-aggression in the Church? Excessive
authoritarianism is one. As Joseph Smith recorded, "We have learned by sad
experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as
soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will
immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. Hence many are called,
but few are chosen,"--in other words, maintenance of power and influence
"by virtue of the priesthood," rather than by "persuasion, by long-
suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned." (D&C 121:
39-41)

A second cause is insecurity. Basically a rigid or authoritarian person
under threat or stress becomes even more so. Thus under the "threat" of a
member questioning a church policy, an authority may hold the line even
more strongly, and feel compelled to refute the member or to set him
straight.

A third cause can be attributed to members, not leaders. Many people have
a desire for instructions spelled out in precise detail rather than
general guidelines. These members try to pressure church leaders into
pronouncing "the final word" on every issue--fostering both increased
authoritarianism, and its concomitant--passive-aggression.

The fourth cause, mentioned before, is family upbringing. An
interrelationship exists between church culture and family rearing
practices, with each affecting the other.

What should be done about passive-aggression in the Church? Should it be
eliminated? Can it be eliminated? Is it ever justified? There are
institutional changes which if undertaken would make passive-aggression
unnecessary. And there are individual steps to be taken if the
institutional changes are not forthcoming. I feel that the Church can
develop an atmosphere where questions can be raised and then--can be left
as questions. It should be emphasized in terms that can be understood by
all that a person's loyalty and integrity and devotion to the Gospel are
not to be doubted solely because he raises a question or expresses a
dissenting opinion. As a corollary, members should be permitted to decline
acceptance of positions without having to feel that they are "bad" people.

In social science and family relations classes, the principle of
passive-aggression needs to be discussed, including the fact that it is as
potentially serious as active aggression. Child rearing particularly needs
to be discussed since passive- aggressive behavior patterns resulting from
upbringing often persist even in situations where they are inappropriate
or self- defeating. In a similar vein, the Church, through its programs,
could encourage marriage partners to air and work out their differences
rather than silently reacting against each other. As a former Bishop of
mine said, "If two partners in a marriage always agree on every issue,
it's a sign that at least one of them has stopped thinking."

But what should we do if the Church as an institution or our local
leadership cannot or will not tolerate more freedom of expression? What if
the authorized channel for problems, grievances or suggestions is the
problem? When we as individuals feel trapped in such a situation and
wonder if dissent is possible, I would recommend the following steps: (1)
Examine ourselves and our motives. Do we really disagree with what has
been stated or just with the way it was stated? When someone presents an
idea in an offensive manner, let us have the charity to accept the
principle for its own merits, perhaps saying, "I agree with what you say,
but you say it so dogmatically that I want to turn you off," and thereby
also give him valuable feedback. (2) Try speaking out. To remain silent
would be to prejudge or write off our leaders and our fellow members as
unwilling or incapable of listening to us. Even if we think it won't do
any good, or that the group has closed minds, let us make the attempt. We
may even find allies who had previously kept silent. If what we say is
accepted, we have accomplished our goal. If we are ignored or put down,
the responsibility must be on the shoulders of others. (3) Finally, after
repeated attempts, if we find that speaking out is futile or that it may
result in an unacceptable loss of status or position in the congregation,
there is always passive-aggression.


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http://bioag.byu.edu/zoology/bioethics/passiveagg.htm


[This says so much, that it needs no commentary]



Perry     <plporter@pobox.com>    http://pobox.com/~plporter

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