Crises within Crises

For this blog post, I originally intended to write only about COP28, the international meeting dealing with the ever-growing environmental crisis. Then, I read powerful opinion pieces by Robert Kagan and became alarmed at the expanding political crisis in the U.S.

But how can we neglect to consider the crises in Gaza, Ukraine, and other countries where warfare continues, such as in Myanmar and Sudan that get far less press coverage? In addition, there are millions of individuals in our world who are facing personal crises of various sorts.

Indeed, there are crises within crises that threaten the well-being and even the survival of individuals, nations, and the world civilization as a whole. Please think with me about these crises, beginning with the outer circle that includes the whole world and moving down to the inner circle of individuals. 

The ever-growing environmental crisis was the central concern of COP28, which met in Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12.*¹ The first COP meeting, convened in Berlin, was in 1995 and there have been yearly meetings since then.

As I have repeatedly pointed out over the last two years, the current ecological predicament is a crisis that threatens the very existence of the world as we know it (TWAWKI). Some progress was made toward alleviating the global environmental crisis at COP28, but it’s probably too little too late.*²

There will be dire consequences for most of the world’s population if drastic changes are not made soon, which is highly unlikely. This is the existential crisis in which all the other crises exist.

The wars in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza are crises for people living in those areas of the world. But there is an ongoing possibility that they will expand into larger wars. In the worst-case scenario, either of these wars could conceivably escalate into World War III.

These crises are rather localized now, but they might conceivably enlarge to rival the ecological crisis as an existential threat to TWAWKI.

Within these two larger crises is the political crisis in the United States. While this crisis is only brewing at present, there is a real and present danger of democracy being replaced in the U.S. with a form of fascism.

I had not been aware of scholar and journalist Robert Kagan until this month, but he is an editor at large for The Washington Post (WaPo) and has been a foreign policy adviser to U.S. Republican presidential candidates as well as to Democratic administrations via the Foreign Affairs Policy Board.

During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kagan (b. 1958) left the Republican Party due to the party's nomination of Donald Trump and endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.

Kagan’s Nov. 30 and Dec. 7 WaPo articles were titled “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending,” and “The Trump dictator-ship: How to stop it.” (These are long pieces, but well worth reading and reflecting on.)

Some Republican politicians are sounding the same warning. For example, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney's new book (released Dec. 5) is titled Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning. (Hear her talk about that in this Dec. 4 interview on NPR.)

On Dec. 10, Sen. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate in 2012, expressed the same sentiment, although more mildly, on “Meet the Press.”*³

There is a lot that can happen between now and Election Day next November, but USAmericans must be aware of the danger of losing their democracy—and minorities, the poor, and the underprivileged are the ones who would suffer most under a non-democratic government.

We common people may not be able to do much about the ecological crisis or the crisis in Ukraine or Gaza, but we do have the power to vote and to encourage our friends and neighbors to be informed and to vote accordingly.

The inner circle is the crisis of individuals who are suffering from illness, poverty, discrimination, or personal tragedies. We pray that many of these people will experience new hope during this Christmas season. Who is one such person you can help between now and December 25?

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*¹ COP stands for the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (Click here to access the UNFCCC website.)

*² Here is the link to a helpful summary of the mixed results of COP28 on The Guardian’s Dec. 14 website.

*³ See here; Romney’s discussion of this matter begins at about 7 min. 45 sec. into the program. 

The End of the Mormon War

What is often called the Mormon War of 1838 began on August 6 of that year. (You can read about that in my August 5 posting.) That war ended soon after the “Haun’s Mill Massacre” that occurred 174 years ago today, on October 30, 1838.

In thinking about the Mormon War, the role of Alexander Doniphan (who is fondly remembered in this part of Missouri) is noteworthy. Doniphan, born in Kentucky in 1808, moved to Liberty and opened a law office in 1833.

Along with David Atchison, Doniphan served as a lawyer for the Mormons from the beginning of his practice in Clay County. He and Atchison, though, asked the Mormons to leave the county in order to avoid civil strife.

Subsequently, Doniphan was instrumental in organizing Caldwell County in 1836 as a place for the Mormons to live in peace. But he was also a brigadier-general in the Missouri state militia and was involved militarily in the Mormon War two years later.

On October 27, 1838, Governor Lilburn Boggs issued a statement to one of the generals in the state militia, declaring that the “Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary, for the public peace.”

Three days later, on that fateful October 30 afternoon, 240-250 Missouri militiamen descended upon Haun’s Mill, a settlement around a mill established in eastern Caldwell County in 1835–36 by Jacob Haun, an early Latter-day Saint settler.

By October 1838 around 50 Mormon families were living around Haun’s Mill, and in the massacre, there were 17 Mormons killed and several others injured. It is not clear whether the massacre was a direct result of the “execution order” issued by Governor Boggs three days earlier.

Soon after the Hauns’ Mill massacre, the Mormon headquarters in Far West surrendered, Joseph Smith and other leaders were arrested, and the Mormon War of 1838 came to an end.

Smith and several other Mormon leaders were court-martialed on November 1. Later that day Major-General Samuel Lucas, the commander of the Missouri militia, sent the following order to Brigadier-General Doniphan: “You will take Joseph Smith and the other prisoners into the public square of Far West and shoot them at 9 o’clock to-morrow morning.”

Doniphan refused to carry out that order. Subsequently, Smith and a few others were brought to a jail in Liberty, where they spent several weeks before escaping and fleeing to Illinois.

Now, 174 years later, a Mormon who has been a missionary and a “pastor” for ten years, is running for President of the United States. He may, or may not, win that election. But it is most likely that he will garner Missouri’s ten electoral votes.

One hundred seventy-four years is a long time, but it is still remarkable that a presidential candidate who is a faithful member of a religion that was once literally run out of the state will probably receive a sizeable majority of the votes in that state.

As most of you know, or can guess, I will be voting to re-elect the current President. For many reasons, I will not and could not vote for Mr. Romney. But his being a Mormon is not one of those reasons.

Mitt the Missionary

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is, as everyone knows, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, popularly known as the Mormon Church. There has, certainly, been discussion in some circles about Romney’s religion, but recently it has been a little-discussed matter.

I had not planned to make a blog posting about Romney’s Mormon faith. But in this week in the second presidential debate Romney himself brought the subject up. He said,

“My -- my passion probably flows from the fact that I believe in God. And I believe we’re all children of the same God. I believe we have a responsibility to care for one another. I -- I served as a missionary for my church.”

I know something about being a missionary, for June and I served as missionaries to Japan for 38 years. And I know a little about Mormons in Japan, for their main headquarters, and since 2000 their temple, in Fukuoka was within easy walking distance from where we lived for more than 20 years.

In spite of Romney’s statement that he believes “we’re all children of the same God,” there is little evidence that Mormons think that all of us are equally God’s children. Their missionary work is almost exclusively directed toward house-to-house visitation seeking to make converts.

From time to time they would come to our house, and telling them we were ourselves Christian missionaries did not always deter them from trying to give their proselytizing spiel.

In Japan, Mormons, along with members of the Unification Church (“Moonies”) and Jehovah’s Witnesses, are widely considered somewhat of a nuisance because of their aggressive proselytization. In fact, many traditional Christian churches in their PR materials usually include the disclaimer that they are not in any way connected with Mormons, Moonies, or JWs.

Because of the small percentage of Christians in the nation, there is generally a great deal of cooperation among Japanese Christians. Through the years I spent a considerable amount of time in various cooperative, ecumenical meetings.

But the Mormons were never there. Not only did they not seem to believe that the non-Christians in Japan did not believe in the same God, it seems that they did (do) not believe that even other Christians believe in the same God, at least not adequately in their view. 

During the 2½ years he was in France, which was (is) overwhelmingly Catholic, Romney’s work was primarily going from house to house seeking converts. And taking inspiration from the pop-psychology book Think and Grow Rich, he is credited with leading the Mormon missionaries in France to exceed their goal of gaining 200 converts in 1968.

Mitt Romney, left, poses with a friend in France in the 1960s

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2012/03/29/mitts-mission-in-france-then-as-now-romney-worked-methodically-to-convert-skeptics/#ixzz29n69gmK5

Last week Romney also said that “we have a responsibility to care for one another.” And no doubt there is considerable care given by Mormons to Mormons. But there is little indication that Mormons do much in society at large in the field of health care, education, or social service. Certainly that has not usually been evident in Japan.

Through the years, traditional Christian missionaries and the churches and organizations started by them have been widely involved in medical, educational, and a multitude of social service activities. But by and large Mormons have not been a part of that history.

And it is even questionable how much of Romney’s considerable offerings given to the Mormon Church can legitimately be called “charitable giving,” as a large portion of those gifts are used for building temples that only Mormons can enter and for efforts to make more converts for the Mormon Church.

The Mormon War in Missouri

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, popularly known as the Mormon Church, began in 1830 after Joseph Smith claimed to have received special revelations from God. The following year, many of his followers moved to Missouri and began to build up the City of Zion near Independence. In 1833, though, they were driven out of the Independence area and began to move north and northeast into Clay and Ray counties.

Adopting a proposal by Alexander Doniphan, in December 1836 the Missouri General Assembly divided Ray County into three separate counties. The middle part became Caldwell County, and it was to be a place for Mormons to live in peace. Most non-Mormons moved out, so the Mormons had almost the entire county for themselves.

In the fall of 1836, a large number of Mormons moved to the new county, and a town named Far West was founded as the county seat. By 1838 the new town reported a population of around 4,000, including such major figures of early Mormon history as Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

The northern part of Ray County became Daviess County in 1836, and it was established for non-Mormons. However, with the migration of large numbers of Mormons to Caldwell County, the Mormons began to expand northward.

Photo by June Seat, 6/30/12

In May 1838 Mormons laid out a town in Daviess County, a town that Smith named Adam-ondi-Ahman, proclaiming that it was the place to which Adam and Eve were banished after leaving the Garden of Eden (near Independence). He said it would be a gathering place on Judgment Day. Before the end of the summer, several hundred Mormons were living in the new settlement, which was just a few miles north of Gallatin, the county seat town that was founded in 1837.

The Gallatin Election Day Battle took place on August 6, 1838, when about 200 people attempted to forcibly prevent Mormons from voting in the newly created county’s first election. That skirmish is often cited as the opening event of the 1838 Mormon War. At that time, Mormons comprised about half of Daviess County’s population of around 2,000 and about one-third of the eligible voters.

The trouble started when William Peniston, a Whig candidate for the state legislature, sought to keep the Mormons from voting. He mounted a barrel and “denounced the Mormons as horse thieves, liars, counterfeiters, and dupes.” Soon a fight broke out resulting in several injuries, but no fatalities. The “war” that started that day continued until the first of November.

I have a particular interest in the Mormon War in Gallatin and Daviess County for several reasons. My high school was in the same sports conference as Gallatin, and I have played basketball at the school there.

Also, part of the Seat family has lived in Daviess County. My grandfather George’s grandfather, Franklin Seat, migrated there with his parents and several siblings in 1842 before moving on a few years later to Worth County, where I was born. Earlier, in 1839, one of Franklin’s sisters married and moved to Daviess County, just the year after the Mormon War. Two other Seat girls married in Daviess County in the 1840s and lived the rest of their lives there.

The main reason I find the Mormon War of 1838 of considerable interest, though, is because Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican candidate for President, is a Mormon. Given the persecution of the Mormons in their early years and the fact that they were completely driven out of Missouri in 1839, it is remarkable that a practicing Mormon could possibly be elected President of the United States this year.

Is Mormonism a Cult?

“Mormonism is a cult.” So declared Dr. Robert Jeffress, the Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church, Dallas, when interviewed after introducing Gov. Rick Perry to the Value Voters Summit (VVS) held last weekend in Washington, D.C.

The VVS was sponsored by The Heritage Foundation, Liberty University, and other groups noted for their conservative religious and political stance. The flier advertising the event quotes Sean Hannity saying that the VVS is “the premier conservative event now in the country.”

All of the major Republican presidential candidates were there, as well as some sitting U.S. Senators and Representatives (all Republicans). But it was Rev. Jeffress’ statement about Mormonism which got the most press coverage as he puffed Mr. Perry and cast aspersions on Mr. Romney.

The next day a Thinking Friend sent me a link to “Mormonism Takes Center Stage,” an article by Rachel Weiner in the October 7 Washington Post. And he posed this question, “Is Mormonism a cult?”

Of course the answer depends largely on how the word cult is defined. The Merriam Webster Online Dictionary defines cult as “a system of religious beliefs and ritual.” In that sense, of course Mormonism is a cult, as is every other denomination or religion.

But the same dictionary also gives this definition: “a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious.” This is most likely the view of Mormonism that Rev. Jeffress had in mind.

It is clear that Mormonism is not one of the historic, “mainstream” Christian denominations. It was organized in 1830, based upon special revelation received by Joseph Smith, who translated The Book of Mormon and began the first meetings that grew into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the official name of what we usually call the Mormon Church.

It is looking more and more as if Mr. Romney will be the Republican candidate for President next year. But does it make any difference if he is a Mormon, even if Mormonism could be accurately described as a cult in a negative sense? I think not.

There are no legal religious requirements for public office in the United States, and for good reason. Religious freedom is a longstanding, and important, principle of national life.

Al Smith was defeated in the 1928 presidential election partly because he was a Catholic. But as most people came to see after the election of JFK, it didn’t make any real difference in public policy for the President to be a Catholic.

And the same sort of thing would most likely be true if Mr. Romney should be elected President next year.

If Mr. Romney does become the Republican candidate for President, though, I won’t vote for him. (In fact, I am not likely to vote for any Republican candidate any time soon.) But it won’t be because he is a member of a “cult.”

I won’t vote for Mr. Romney because of his political ideas and the platform of the party on which he stands. And I hope that all voters will cast their ballots on the basis of political conviction and not because of religious, or any other type of, prejudice.