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.