A Mormon Fundamentalist Review: Under the Banner of Heaven Ep. 5 & 6

 So, I knew a guy...

Let's call him "Clyde", even though that's not really his name.  I knew him through the internet in the 2000s, on the Yahoo! discussion groups, specifically groups with Mormon topics.  Back in those days, I was hotheaded and ready to debate controversial points of Mormon doctrine.  Nowadays, I'm not so much like that, but back then I would debate with guys like Clyde on a regular basis.  Clyde was LDS and not Mormon fundamentalist, like me.  But he was the type of of Latter-Day Saint who was not afraid to "delve into the mysteries", or discuss matters that were forbidden to bring up in church settings.  I found Clyde to be a bit arrogant and a bit of a know-it-all, but I didn't think much on him after that.

About seven years later, I got a message from Clyde one evening.  He stated that he was sitting with the missionaries in my Arizona hometown, and they mentioned my name to him.  I asked him if he lived in the area, and he said that he had just moved here.  So, I invited Clyde and his family over for dinner one Friday night, along with other Mormon fundamentalist friends from the area.  Clyde was clean-cut and friendly.  He was very intelligent and well-spoken, but he was always self-assured and intense.  But I liked him right away.  He had a large family, and his teens hit it off right away with my teens.  His wife was timid and quiet and didn't  have much to say.

Friday dinners with Clyde, his family, and my fundie friends soon became a weekly tradition.  We bonded over good food and gospel talk.  Clyde would eventually argue his ideas, and the discussion usually turned into a heated argument.  Usually between Clyde and my fundamentalist friends.  When the discussion started getting vehement, I would sit on the couch and tune it out.  Twenty years of circular debates on same topics over and over had burned me out.  I am interested in a free exchange of ideas between people, but I have zero interest in trying to convince anyone that I am right or being pressed upon by anyone to believe a certain way.  For instance, Clyde believed that plural marriage was not an essential to exaltation, only an option, and fundamentalists, of course, believe that plural marriage must be lived to attain the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom.  Ideas like this would be bantered back and forth until late in the night, and I would sit, quiet and bored, until everyone left. Still, I loved the good company, and I really, really liked Clyde.

One thing I noticed about Clyde - a need to always be right.  He was not open to any new ideas and didn't want to consider anything that you might tell him, but he was gonna tell you how things were.  As I got to know him better, he shared with me some of his personal history.  He wasn't always just LDS, but he had belonged to the Second Book of Commandments (2BC) people, once known as the School of the Prophets.  The 2BC is a book of modern day revelations written by Robert Crossfield, also known as the Prophet Onias.  (I always laughed at that name.  I suppose "The Prophet Onias" sounds more prophet-like than "The Prophet Bob".)  I knew that this was the group that the Lafferty brothers had belonged to, and I balked when he told me that he had been involved with this same organization.  But Clyde quickly disavowed and distanced himself from the Laffertys.  He assured me that he did not sanction what they had done, but condemned it.  Still, it sounded a bit weird to me. The Lafferty murders carry a huge stigma with fundamentalists.

Clyde described their version of scripture study, which were really guided meditations on how to get your own revelations.  He described a process of emptying your mind with a pen and paper in front of you and writing the first thing that comes to your mind, kind of like automatic writing.  This is how they received their revelations, and this is the same way the Laffertys received their "revelations".  Then they would share them with each other.

As all things tend to do, the Friday dinners came to an end after a few months when Clyde and his family returned to Utah.  I was sad to see him go and still miss those dinners as all my friends have moved, and I'm all alone now.  I kept in touch with Clyde via social media, and so it was that I saw photos of him with a pretty woman.  I contacted him and guessed that he had entered plural marriage, and he confirmed to me that, indeed, this was his plural wife - a woman he had known in the 2BC days.  I was really surprised that he had taken such a drastic step outside of the mainstream church, but I was very happy for him.

After a while, I noticed his posts become more erratic and vehement, almost belligerent.  He would post long rants about the gospel and about the government, and he would get quite upset when anyone would disagree with him publicly.  This isn't my first rodeo.  I could see where this was headed.  So, I really wasn't surprised when he emailed me a list of "revelations" he had received, and he wanted to know my thoughts.  Truthfully, I never read them.  I scanned them to know that he adopted a "prophet name" other than his own.  Frankly, I was too sad to see him go down this path to read them.  After a week or two, he wrote me again, demanding to know if I had read them or not.  I offered a lame reply that I would get around to it, but I never did.  I never really heard anymore from Clyde after that.

I did hear whispers in fundamentalist circles that he had named himself the "One Mighty and Strong", but he posted on social media that this claim was false.  But it was evident to me that he was making some sort of claim.

The concept of One Mighty and Strong figures prominently in both Episodes 5 and 6 of Under the Banner of Heaven, just as it figures strongly in Mormon fundamentalist cosmology.  The reference comes from a letter written by Joseph Smith to W.W. Phelps in 1832 where he makes some cryptic prophecies similar to passages in Isaiah:

"It shall come to pass, that I, the Lord God, will send one mighty and strong, holding the scepter of power in his hand, clothed with light for a covering, whose mouth shall utter words, eternal words; while his bowels shall be a fountain of truth, to set in order the house of God, and to arrange by lot the inheritances of the Saints, whose names are found, and the names of their fathers, and of their children enrolled in the book of the law of God: while that man, who was called of God and appointed, that putteth forth his hand to steady the ark of God, shall fall by the vivid shaft of lightning."

This verse is canonized in LDS scripture still as part of Section 85 of Doctrine & Covenants.  The LDS Church hates this scripture, because Mormon fundamentalists love it so much.  The LDS Church hates it, because it implies that "the house of God" - or the church - must be "set in order".  To be set in order suggests that the church must first be out of order, and that is problematic for a worldwide church that claims to be infallible and unable to lead the Saints astray.  And so they have established an elaborate explanation that One Mighty and Strong refers to Edward Partridge, an early Mormon bishop, thereby making the setting in order a thing of the past and not a future event.

Mormon fundamentalists love Section 85, because it gives them justification for being separate from the Mother Church and gives them hope that everything will be set right by some individual foretold by prophecy.  The result is a horde of men over the last two centuries who have proclaimed themselves to be the One Mighty and Strong.  For instance, Ben LeBaron, in the early 1960s, was arrested for holding up traffic on 3300 South and State Street in Salt Lake City for doing one-armed push-ups - fifty of them - to prove that he was One Mighty and Strong.  It always seems to be the unhinged element of Mormon fundamentalism that makes these grandiose claims.

And it becomes a joke to those of us fundies on the more normal spectrum.  (How many "Ones" can there be?) ("No, you can't be the One Mighty and Strong, because I'm One Mighty and Strong!")  Most fundamentalists believe that One Mighty and Strong will be Joseph Smith returned in his glory, because this being is described as having "light for a covering", or a resurrected being.  Both Joseph Musser and Ogden Kraut taught this.  But in 1867, W.W. Phelps wrote to  Brigham Young about the letter sent to him by the Prophet Joseph:

"Now this revelation was sent to me in Zion, and has reference to the time when Adam our Father & God, comes at the beginning of our Eternal Lot of inheritance."

So, the One Mighty and Strong was always Adam, returning at the end of the world to assign inheritances at Adam-Ondi-Ahman.  I wish that all of these claimants, heretics, and false prophets would have understood this passage.  It might have spared a lot of heartache and grief.  But maybe not.  Our religion seems to draw out the fringe element.  In my 32 years as a fundamentalist, I can't tell you how many Ones Mighty and Strong I have come across, how many reincarnated Joseph Smiths, how many Holy Ghosts in the flesh.  I have learned to identify them quickly and give them a wide berth.

Me & Stone

Here is another story of a man I knew - I will call him by his nickname, Stone.  Stone passed away many years ago, but he was a dear friend of mine.  When he came back from Vietnam in the mid 1970s, he was walking through downtown Salt Lake City one Sunday when he passed a storefront and heard someone speaking in tongues.  He recognized it as the Japanese language, so he entered the building to find a church meeting going on.  It was John Bryant's congregation - recently broken off from the AUB.  Stone took a seat and wound up joining that church.  This was how he came into fundamentalism.

John Bryant had spirited away members of the AUB and founded a United Order in the Nevada desert.  (They later relocated to Oregon.)  But many people left - including Stone - when it was revealed that Bryant was creating a sex cult tinged with Mormonism.  He turned the endowment into something kinky.  Some of those who left went back to the AUB, and I heard about it there.  A funny story - when the AUB was preparing to do the endowment for the first time in 1982, they had some temple prep classes, and one woman who had only experienced the Bryant version of the temple ceremony told the unendowed candidates, "Don't be surprised when you hear the F-word in the endowment.  It's the most sacred of words."  Apparently, Bryant was liberal with the word "fuck" in his version of the temple ritual.

I had no idea that Ron Lafferty had received baptism from John Bryant until Lindsay Hansen Park called me to ask questions about Bryant.  I got to hear some of the script from this episode while they were filming.

Watching this show has made me realize that I have known a lot of - forgive the expression - kooks during my career as a fundamentalist.  Has this become so commonplace for me that I have become lackadaisical about it?  Instead of giving these types a wide berth is there something more I could be doing about it?  These are the types of questions that I, as a Mormon fundamentalist, ask myself as I watch this program.

The program places the blame squarely on personal revelation, and they may be right.  Yet personal revelation is one of most vital tenets of the Mormon faith.  Personal revelation is one of  the most important tenets to me, and I have had special experiences in my life.  However, I have a litmus test that I have in my own life - I don't accept anyone else's testimony unless I have a witness for myself.  This has helped me to test all topics.  It doesn't matter how much priesthood a man holds.  His revelations don't mean anything to me unless I have had the same revelation.  This has helped me call into question many doctrines in the LDS Church and Mormon fundamentalism that I don't accept at face value anymore.  I have been taught that revelation comes from three sources - from God, from Satan, and from yourself.  My experience is that most "revelations" come from the latter two.  With personal revelation, there is the threat of deception, even self-deception.  If your revelation is suggesting harm to someone else, or taking away someone's liberty or happiness, it's not from God.

I'm reminded of something a hippie friend of mine suggested when I was in college, "Maybe Abraham failed the test when God told him to kill his son, Isaac, and he listened."