A Mormon Fundamentalist Review: Under the Banner of Heaven Ep. 7

 

I am an excommunication whore...

At least, this is what a friend said about me tongue-in-cheek, given the number of times I have been the recipient of excommunications.

Four times.  I have been excommunicated four times.  Once from the LDS Church at the tender age of 20 for "apostasy" - apostasy being studying the principle of plural marriage and believing that it should be lived.  Once about five years later from the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB), a polygamous offshoot of the LDS Church, cut off for helping compose a list of complaints and mass mailing it to the whole church.  A third time twelve years later in a smaller community for disagreeing with the leader on the topic of race, and the final time just five years ago simply for being a certain race. (Much more on this topic in later posts.)

Whereas excommunications are a hard thing to go through, I am grateful for each experience, because they taught me hard yet valuable lessons that I likely wouldn't experience elsewhere.  The result is that I now consider myself an Independent Mormon Fundamentalist, not belonging to any formally organized church or group.  It's better this way.  Lonelier, yes.  But better.  It is with a measure of pride that I can say that I have always stood up for what I perceive to be correct principle.

So, here's the funny part - despite going through so many excommunications, I have never had an excommunication trial or hearing.  Not once.  In the LDS Church, I received in the mail both the invitation to my trial and the results - both on the same day.  I was tried in absentia.  In the AUB, we were "invited" not to return and then shunned by people we assumed were friends.  No trial.  The third one was the most bizarre.

Every Sunday morning, we used to get up at the crack of dawn and meet for prayers in the upstairs room of our chapel.  There was an altar up there, and we dressed in our temple clothes to pray.  Everyone had a key to the prayer room, so that we could use the room privately whenever we wanted.  The way we found out we were excommunicated - we showed up one morning to find that the locks to the prayer room had been changed.  Our keys didn't work, and we were barred from entering a prayer room we had labored to help build.  We were released from our callings without thanks or even notification.  I had taught Youth Sunday School for ten years; my wives had been involved with Primary for just as long.  Other people were simply called to replace us, and the way we found out was through the rumor mill.  Can you think of anything more Mormon and passive aggressive than just changing locks without talking to anyone? (The fourth time I was excommunicated was from a much smaller group and was sort of mutual.  I just stopped going.)

Something else peculiar happened after the locks were changed.  In a public meeting, the leader of this group was discussing me and the other people who were cut off, and he physically dusted his feet of us.  I was shocked when I heard this.  This man was supposed to be my friend.  This was something that you reserve for your enemies.  The dusting of the feet is a symbol of casting off the wicked and unrepentant and delivering them over to the wrath of God.  Just because I had a differing opinion with "one man", I was not only cast out, but cursed.

The scene in Episode 7, the final episode of the FX/ Hulu series Under the Banner of Heaven, where the General Authority dusts his feet of Jeb Pyre (Andrew Garfield) and the murder investigation of Brenda Wright Lafferty and her infant daughter Erica - that scene was triggering for me.  Without a doubt, there were many things in the episode that I found disturbing and triggering.  But that particular scene struck a personal chord with me.  It brought me to remembrance of all the excommunications I have garnered, and that time when a man I used to love dusted his feet of me...

The custom of shaking the dust from your feet against someone was taken from the New Testament where the apostles were given instructions in regard to how to handle those who denied them hospitality while out in the world preaching the Word.  They were to "depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet" and that it "would be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city" (Matthew 15: 14-15).  As the early Latter-Day Saints began to send out missionaries out, they appropriated the same custom, and it is found several places in Doctrine & Covenants:

"And in whatsoever place ye shall enter, and they receive you not in my name, ye shall leave a cursing instead of a blessing, by casting off the dust of your feet against them as a testimony, and cleansing your feet by the wayside." D&C 24: 15

So, how was that performed by the Saints?  Was it simply stamping your feet as depicted in Episode 7?  It was actually a formal priesthood ordinance.  In 1880, during the tenure of John Taylor, the leadership of the church were wanted men and hiding from the federal authorities, Wilford Woodruff was hiding in a sheep camp in Sunset, Arizona - not far from where I live as I write this.  Even though John Taylor was the president at the time, Woodruff dictated the words of a lengthy revelation addressed to the Quorum of the Twelve.  This revelation is known to fundamentalists as the 1880 Revelation and can be found with other uncanonized revelations in both fundamentalist publications The Four Hidden Revelations and Unpublished Revelations.  In regard to the many enemies of the church, the revelation said:

"Go ye alone by yourselves, whether in heat or in cold and cleanse your feet in water, pure water, it matters not whether it be by the running streams, or in your closets; but leave these testimonies before the Lord and the heavenly hosts; and when.. ye do these things with purity of heart, I the Lord will hear your prayers and am bound by oath and covenant to defend you and fight your battles."

As an interesting, yet not completely irrelevant, aside, the FLDS Church reject completely the 1880 Revelation - not just because Wilford Woodruff was the "traitor" who compromised with the government and issued the Manifesto that ended plural marriage, but because the revelation tells the apostles that they "hold in common the Keys".  That flies in the face of their One Man Rule doctrine that gives Warren Jeffs the excuse to be the only one in control.  More abuse of power, but more on that later...

The 1880 Revelation also instructs the apostles to "gather yourselves together in your Holy places and clothe yourselves in the robes of the Holy Priesthood and there offer up your prayers..."  So, the recipe to get the Lord to fight your battles was to perform the washing of feet ordinance as testimony against your enemies and to place the names of your enemies on your prayer lists before God.  It was said that Joseph Smith's prayer meetings were more like cursing meetings, because he had so many people against him and so many court cases.

So, why am I telling stories of my collection of excommunications?  Why am I recounting that I never had a priesthood tribunal?  Or was listened to?  That I had a curse laid upon me by an alleged friend?  Because all of this is representative of what I perceive as the greatest problem in Mormonism - both mainstream LDS and Mormon fundamentalist - the arbitrary abuse of power.

And imperfect as Under the Banner was on some levels, Dustin Lance Black captured this perfectly.  The General Authority dusting off his feet against Pyre, or the blessing laid upon the head of Brenda by church leaders compelling her to stay in a situation that proved fatal, or the many scenes that depict priesthood holders extracting blind obedience from wives - both the Laffertys and even Pyre.  It doesn't matter that many of these events were fictionalized.  They resonated with many, many people.  Because so many have gone through strikingly similar events.

My wife and me at the premiere

The combination of arbitrary abuse of power in tandem with unquestioning obedience is a dangerous thing.  This unholy union led to the tragedy of Mountain Meadows, and it led to the to the brutal murder of Brenda Wright Lafferty, and her daughter, Erica.  How I wept to see both of these scenes depicted on the small screen!  Because these are the fruits of our folly.  These are the real casualties of our ideological speculation.  This is the product of our vanity - that blood soaks the carpet of a quaint home in American Fork, Utah and drenches the stones of a mountain valley in southern Utah.  All of Mormonism is under condemnation because of this blood, and the only way to move past it is to confront it.  The fact that a TV show has made us so uncomfortable proves that there must be a reckoning.  If we prayed for the blood of Joseph Smith to be avenged to the third and fourth generations, if we believed that this was a thing, how long will we be held accountable for the blood we have spilled?  For the doctrines that led to bloodshed?

I am a Mormon fundamentalist.  Yet I walk comfortably in ex-Mormon circles.  That's in part because ex-Mos and fundies both asked the hard questions; we came up with different answers to the questions.  But I am asked all the time -"Why are you still a believer?  Knowing all that you know, why are you still a believer?"  The answer to that is complicated.  A couple of years ago, I met for a couple of hours with a cultural anthropology professor from California.  She asked me a series of questions about my beliefs afterwards, and she left baffled.  She expected to find a dyed-in-the-wool, Trump-supporting, Bible-thumping fundamentalist.  I think she was almost disappointed that I didn't fit the stereotype.  I am not a literalist, and I question every doctrine, every teaching, any principle, every revelation that crosses my path.  And I'm not afraid to toss out things that don't make sense or serve me any longer.  Some people have a "shelf" - I have a "garbage can".

And that is because - me, along with the people I'm close to - witnessed so much abuse of power along our path of Mormon fundamentalism that we have developed a penchant for questioning everything, much to the annoyance of many of our contemporaries.  Also, we have a deep distrust of leadership, and none of us ever want to put ourselves in any capacity where we are in charge of anyone.  Ever.  And that is because of what the Prophet Joseph wrote in D&C 121:39:

"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."

This is a universal truth.  All men.  Even myself.  I've seen abuse of power among fundamentalist men. 

"Follow your file leader." "When the brethren speak, the thinking has been done." "Stand at the rack, hay or no hay." "You cannot question us, because you are not our peer."

These are literally things I have heard said.  And here is the freaky part - I have seen that capacity within myself as well.  And it scares the hell out of me.  So, I try to remain humble as best as I can.  Many things in my life have helped keep me that way, including numerous excommunications.  So, I decline leadership. I'm a nobody.

One of the reasons I have held to my Mormon faith are several spiritual experiences.  These make it hard to question my faith. I usually keep them close to my heart and don't share them with others, but permit me to share one that may be relevant.

My deceased father came to me in a dream, dressed in his temple whites.  I recognized in my dream that he was from the other side, so I asked him what he had to say to me.  He embraced me and whispered in my ear three times, "Test all topics the way you are taught in the temple."  Then he vanished.

Beyond the alliteration, I have pondered over the years what that might mean.  I have come to the conclusion - we must test all topics.  Everything should be questioned.  Nothing is unimpeachable.  Doctrines.  Teachings.  Practices.  Everything can and must be tried.  Even our beloved leaders.  Only then can we make sense of these brutal murders and ensure they never happen again.

I've reached the end of my reviews for Under the Banner of Heaven.  I started out this review not knowing what I was going to write about.  I hope it didn't come across too preachy.  I want to thank Dustin Lance Black, Troy Williams, and Lindsay Hansen Park for their vision.

Through the Veil: A Mormon Fundamentalist Temple Experience

AUB temple, Ozumba, Mexico

 In the autumn of 1992, I drove early in the morning with my parents to a large house at the bottom of a ravine at the Point-of-the-Mountain in Bluffdale, Utah - only a mile, or two, from the Utah State Penitentiary in Draper.  The air was crisp, and I got out of the car, carrying a plastic bag of neatly-folded white clothing.  We walked towards the ordinary looking two-story house, and I felt a flood of nervous energy.  I didn't know what to expect as we walked, not to the front door, but through the garage door.  The garage was dark, empty, and nondescript with cold, cement floors.  At the back of the garage, there was a short set of steps that led to a heavy door.  Above the door was a sign that said: "Holiness to the Lord".

We knocked at the door, and we were admitted into a waiting room.  The cold sparseness of the garage belied the opulence of the waiting room.  The carpet was clean, and the walls were freshly painted, adorned with hardwood trim.  The chairs were luxurious and cushioned.  The waiting room was already filled with other people waiting, wearing jackets and street clothes in the chilly morning, carrying bags with them, so we took a seat.  My future bride and her parents were among them.  She smiled brightly at me, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment.  But she didn't say anything to me.  No one said anything.  Everyone in the room was hushed and not speaking.  At the head of the room, with a chair facing towards us was Owen Allred, the man I regarded at the time as my prophet, the senior member of the Priesthood Council of the Apostolic United Brethren, or the AUB.  (Except that no one in the AUB called it that.  They called it "The Work", or simply "The Group".)

Brother Owen was usually a gregarious and good-natured old man.  His customary way of greeting me was to punch me on the shoulder, sometimes hard enough to nearly knock me over.  Once when I grew a goatee, he grabbed my facial hair and yanked until there were nearly tears, demanding, "What's this?"  But he almost always ended each rough encounter by grabbing my head, bumping my forehead to his, growling, "I sure love you, brother!"  But not today.  In this waiting room, Brother Owen didn't even look up at me.  He was solemn, dressed in his white suit.  He silently made marks in a white ledger he carried, and, as I watched him, he never looked more like a prophet.  

Owen Allred and me, 1994

In the silence, I studied Owen and the room.  I tried to gauge the feeling in there.  One thing I noticed on the door were golden stars arranged in the pattern of the Big Dipper.  When I went to sacrament meetings, when I sang hymns, there was a certain feeling I got.  The feeling in this room was... different.  To this day, I don't know how else to describe it, but there was a palpably different feeling from regular worship.  This was more primeval, more powerful.  Soon, I was the first one called into the washing and anointing room...

So, why am I telling the story of my receiving the temple endowment as a practicing Mormon fundamentalist?  Because the temple ceremony has become relevant in online discussions following depicted dramatically on the FX/ Hulu limited series, Under the Banner of Heaven.  The internet is abuzz with discourse about the more bizarre and hidden aspect of Mormon worship.  Ex-Mormons speak freely about how troubling and traumatic the experience was for them.  Faithful Latter-Day Saints remain quiet and reticent on the subject.  I suppose, among believers, it rests upon me to recount my experiences going through the temple ceremony since I am unafraid to discuss the particulars.  I have made a great study of the endowment, its archetypal sources, and its history of practice among Mormon polygamists.  As open as I am, however, there are some things I am unwilling to disclose or discuss, mainly the things I have covenanted not to reveal.  You can read all about those things online anyway.  They're not hidden.

The temple endowment ceremony is relatively new among Mormon fundamentalists.  The initial division between polygamists and the LDS Church was ephemeral in the 1920s.  At first, excommunications for post-Manifesto plural marriages were pro tempore and for show for the government who was watching to make sure that Mormons fulfilled their promise to end the practice of polygamy.  Even those who were excommunicated seemed to not be totally rejected by the greater LDS community.  For instance, Patriarch John W. Woolley was no longer allowed to sit near the podium in his ward during sacrament meetings after being cut off from the church, but he was still afforded a place of honor in a separate chair just to the side of the podium.  In the early days of fundamentalism, the children of fundamentalists were still able to attend church functions, including going on missions, including going to the temple.  So, whenever a fundamentalist family wanted their children to receive their endowments, they sent them to the LDS Church.

The AUB Council circa 1990

This was in keeping with the commission given to Lorin C. Woolley, the founder of the fundamentalist movement, that they were not to interfere or duplicate anything that the church was able to do.  After all, it was still the Lord's Church, even if it was in an "out of order" state.  Fundamentalists were told that they were not to organize, not to recreate any of the church's  auxiliaries.  They were to perpetuate plural marriage only.  This was their calling - to keep alive the one principle that the church had done away with until the church was ready to accept polygamy again.  And so, polygamists sent their children to make covenants in the temples of the LDS Church.

At least until the schism between mainstream members and fundamentalists grew wider.  There came a day when the children of polygamists were no longer welcome in the church, and a whole generation of plyg kids grew up with no knowledge of the endowment.  The temple was simply a beautiful yet impregnable building viewed from afar, a symbol as cold and as unwelcoming as the church who had cast them out.  Fundamentalism still continued to garner new adherents from the church, and most of them had experienced the temple ceremony while in the church.  But the temple doors were effectively closed to all older fundamentalist families.  As the LDS Church altered the garment pattern, Rulon Allred made a practice of placing the old-style long garments on newer fundamentalists who were wearing the newer church garment, but that's the extent of temple-style work done by fundamentalists.  (It should be pointed out that the LeBaron tradition possibly has a much different story.)

Rulon used to instruct his people to pray for the doors of the LDS temples to be opened up to them, so they could enter into them again.  They pray for this even now.

Then came the lifting of the priesthood ban by the LDS Church, which allowed all worthy members to enter the temples, regardless of race or color.  (I have a lot to say on this subject at a later date.)  The question came to the AUB Council - with the lifting of the priesthood ban, would the Lord still accept of endowments done by the Mormon Church.  So, they decided to convene a meeting, presided by Owen Allred, to pray over the matter.

On January 23, 1981, the AUB Council met in Crescent, Utah to pray about what to do about temple work.  Half of the council was old enough to be endowed, and the other half had not.  They split into two groups - one group dressed in temple robes to pray, and the other group in a separate room prayed on their own.  They reconvened and wrote their impressions on a piece of paper, and the consensus was that they should begin temple work.  After they reached a decision, Owen began to dictate the words of a revelation.  The scribe was so shocked what was happening that his jaw dropped and his pen dropped, and he missed much of the wording.  But this is what he got:

"The word of the Lord unto my servants:

 "I have waited this long time for you to present yourselves before me in this manner.  I have heard your prayers and will answer you according to your desires in regards to keeping all of the laws and ordinances of the Priesthood, as well as the ordinances of My House alive on the earth, in as much as I am unable to accept the ordinances in My House.

 "I am your Lord Jesus Christ who was crucified for the sins of the world.  It is your calling and responsibility to keep alive these principles in this dispensation lest they be taken from the earth and the earth be destroyed.

"Remain humble and prayerful.  Do not become proud in your callings lest you be destroyed in the spirit.  Seek me in prayer, clothed in the Holy Robes of the priesthood, united in faith and I will answer all of your righteous desires.  I am your Lord, Jesus, Christ.  Even so.  Amen."

This revelation is still relatively hidden from the AUB.  Most still don't know about it.  When it was published anonymously in 1994, Owen, over the pulpit, called it a "betrayal".

From this point on, they started to prepare to administer temple blessings.  The first step was to create a script for the ceremony.  They obtained scripts of the modern endowment in both English and Spanish on the downlow from the LDS Church.  They purchased documents from unaffiliated historian and polygamist, Fred Collier.  One of the Council members, Bill Baird, had been to the temple so many times as an LDS member that he filled the monthly temple quota for his ward by himself.  He had been taken under the wing of the Cardston Temple president and taught the intricacies of the ceremony.  So, the AUB took all of these items and created the endowment, which is close to the 1877 St. George ceremony.

AUB Endowment House (LH), Bluffdale, UT

Next, came the construction of a facility wherein to administer these blessings.  A nondescript house in Bluffdale, Utah was outfitted inside to be an endowment house, which was where I was married.  Next, they constructed a temple in the AUB colony in Ozumba, Mexico.  I have spoken to people who were at the dedication.  It was reportedly a pentecostal experience.  Many reported seeing their departed in the temple.  The night of the dedication, they closed the temple up, only to notice the lights left on inside.  Someone went in to turn the lights off, but they were already off.  They reported an unearthly glow coming from inside the building.  They also planned on building a temple in Pinesdale, Montana, but the funds were diverted to build a school instead.

When my family joined the AUB in 1991, the group had been administering endowments for about five or six years. Our path to fundamentalism had been a long one, and my parents, who once had gone to the LDS temple at least once a week, had not attended in protest for many years and were happy to again have a chance to dress in their robes.  They were giddy to travel down to Mexico with the Council and spend a week in that temple.

So it was that I got engaged and found myself in the endowment house in Utah, in the waiting room across from Owen Allred.  They called me into the washing and anointing room, which was awkward, but it was my dad who performed it.  Then the garment was placed upon me - the long garment with long sleeves, all the way to the wrist and all the way to the ankles, complete with string ties.  The garment was hot and itchy and uncomfortable to wear under your clothing. 

From there, I was escorted to the Creation Room by my father.  I was the first one in there.  My dad took me up front to be seated.  He placed both hands on my shoulders lovingly and looked into my eyes.  His eyes were teary.  He told me that my future bride and I had been selected as the "couple at the altar", and that it was a great honor for me.  Then he left me by myself.  As I sat there alone, I remember hearing clearly the voice of LaMoine Jenson in the next room, the next leader of the AUB, gossiping to someone about different members of the Group, mentioning them by name, saying that they had been teaching false doctrine.  It was a startling moment for me.  I could see neither, but I could hear them clearly.  I don't think that they were aware that anyone could hear them.

People began to file into the room after their own washings and anointings, and, once everybody was there, the endowment started.  It is essentially a passion play, and the AUB performs it live.  No movie like the LDS Church.  In fact, later, I saw some of the actors in church meetings, people I had never seen before the endowment, and I continued to think of them in my mind as the characters they played for a longtime after.  "Oh look, there's Satan!" "Hey, there's the Preacher!"  There were plenty of temple workers there to help me with the change of clothes and to guide me through the prescribed gestures.  (Yes, there were penalties.)  There was nothing really new in the endowment for me, nothing that I hadn't already learned in my scripture studies, but I remember things making more sense to me at the time.

My bride on our honeymoon

At the veil, my dad helped me through, and then I brought my wife through the veil.  One good thing about the AUB, being believers of "patriarchal order", or allowing fathers to administer ordinances for their own family as much as possible.  In fact, when the time came for my bride and me to be sealed, Owen Allred called my father up to perform my sealing.  Owen explained, "Your father is sealing you both, but it is through my authority.  Just like my name will be the one on your marriage certificate as the officiator."

So, my father performed the sealing ceremony while I stared at my blushing bride.  Then we left the building as an endowed, married couple, long garments beneath our clothes, our skin still slick with olive oil as they use it quite liberally during the anointing.

That was the extent of my endowment experience within the AUB.  I got invited to another session a couple of months later, but I was sick, so I declined going.  I got invited to one of their monthly prayer meetings.  These meetings were by invitation only, and those in attendance would dress in the robes and pray in the true order.  There were so many people in the prayer room that there was a circle within the prayer circle.  At that meeting I went to, Dave Watson, the current leader of the AUB, was called to the Council.

Fundamentalist temple

You have to understand - the AUB has about 9,000 members, and only one endowment house available in the U.S. They only have one session per month.  The waiting list to go in and do work for the dead is six months long.  And many members aren't even aware that the AUB does work for the dead.  When I asked Ron Allred, a Council member, why this was so, he retorted, "Then don't tell them!  If they don't know about it, maybe they're not supposed to know!"  The AUB suffers from an elitist mentality, which is one of the reasons why I left/ was thrown out eventually.

With my one and only experience being endowed, I used to practice the signs in front of the bathroom mirror so that I wouldn't forget.  When I was tossed out of the AUB, I got involved with several other groups before I settled on becoming an Independent Mormon fundamentalist, without formal church or group.  And everywhere I have been, I have done temple work.  I served as a temple worker for over twenty years.  At one point, I had the entire ceremony memorized inside and out.  I studied the meaning and origins of the symbols, searching out older archetypes.  I studied Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Kabbalah, Wicca, Egyptian and Eleusinian Mysteries, pagan tradition, gnosticism - anything that would help me understand the endowment better.  I have performed endowments in houses that were repurposed and redecorated to serve as makeshift, temporary temples.  I have entered endowment houses and fundamentalist temples.  Several groups have temples outside of the LDS Church.  Christ's Church has two temples.  The FLDS have a temple (although I suspect that they have little understanding what goes on in one).  The same can be said of many, many groups.  The endowment is alive and well...

So what do I think about the endowment as portrayed in Under the Banner?  Well, I have a hard time seeing anything like that depicted for television.  It's too sacred for me.  It's something that, for me, is beautiful and not ominous. That said, it was done beautifully and tastefully.  The costumes were immaculate.  The set was realistic.  Do I think that people can use the teachings of the temple to justify harmful, and even violent acts and behavior?  Of course.  Although I think that arises from a lack of understanding, and that is our fault.  We make something so sacred and secret - yes, secret is the word - that we offer no instruction or explanation.  People go in unprepared and leave baffled.  Temples should be places of learning, not bewilderment.  How can you agree to a covenant or oath if you have no idea what it is you're swearing?