Is it just me, or has the Church become markedly less millennialist in the past years, or at least markedly less strident in its millennialism?

You can hardly read a nineteenth-century Mormon source, including much of the Doctrine & Covenants, without being reminded that the world is coming to an end, and that we must urgently repent, gather ourselves and the elect to Zion, and prepare the world for the imminent return of Christ. The twentieth-century Church was pretty heavy on millennial themes too, particularly during the Cold War. Of course, we never got quite so specific as the Millerites (and many others) who predicted the actual day of Jesus’ return, nor have we typically charted it out in quite so much detail as the Protestant dispensational premillennialists (i.e. the “Left Behind� crowd, with roots back to a late nineteenth-century chap named Darby). But we’ve always been pretty active on the “the end is near� front, if not quite so weird about it as the street preacher and placard-carrying types.

My sense is that in the last, oh, 15 or 20 years, there has been a steep decline in millenarian rhetoric in the Church, in virtually all forums – General Conference, Sunday School lessons, seminary classes, private conversations.

If I’m right—and I’m willing to admit that’s a big “if�—I wonder why this is. A few random ideas:

- There are certainly still plenty of “signs and wonders� which suggest “the end is near.� Catastrophes, natural and man-made, are never in short supply, and people are always willing to say “it’s getting worse.� The Cold War is over, but we can still find the Antichrist in various places, whether in the U.N. or Osama bin Laden or whatever. I’m suggesting that there is no decrease of external factors for our millennialism.

- You can only say “the end is near� for so long before it starts to look a little ridiculous. Let’s face it, we’ve been doing it for 170-odd years. The early Christians did a lot of doomsaying, but after a few centuries the church sort of settled in. (Although millennialism obviously never disappeared completely, it has had almost no role in mainstream Catholic theology for centuries.) Maybe we’re suffering from “last days fatigue.�

- Perhaps we are now victims of our own success. Millennialism works great for persecuted minorities. When they start to acquire a little more traction in society—politically, economically, socially—they look around and say, “Well, maybe this world isn’t so bad.� At that point they go from “world-renouncers� to “world-transformers,� in which they simply want to refashion the world, not destroy it. When you live in a nice suburb, drive two nice cars, earn a nice paycheck, and have four nice children with nice teeth who go to nice schools, maybe this world doesn’t seem so terrible after all. Giving it all up and walking to Missouri sounds better when you live in a crappy desert than in a gated community.

First, what do I mean by spiritual capital? Capital is “accumulated goods devoted to the production of other goods.� So spiritual capital is “accumulated spiritual goods devoted to the production of other spiritual goods.� In some sense what I’m talking about here is karma – “the [spiritual] force generated by a person’s actions…� (thanks m-w.com). While we usually think about this in eternal judgment terms – i.e. the good things I do now will produce good results later – here I want to talk about spiritual capital in terms of our membership in wards.

Moving into a new ward is always a strange thing. On the one hand, there’s the much-ballyhooed experience of “having family� wherever one goes in the Church. As clichéd as this can be, I find that it is true; I generally have a stronger connection with Mormons, wherever they are, than I do with my neighbors or other people of similar racial, class, gender, and even professional backgrounds (hence I like the Mormons-as-ethnic argument, but that’s for another time). But we all know that not all family members are entirely equal, at least in terms of their functionality (i.e. my crazy Aunt Bev). So when you move into a ward, you’re checking it out for how comfortable you’ll be, and everyone is checking you out as to whether you’ll fit in and, perhaps more importantly, contribute.

Based on my personal experience and various conversations, the type of people who are suffering through this post might be the type of people who have some angst about fitting in in most LDS wards. This is not because the people who are reading this (i.e. “you�) are bad people, or even as weird as my Aunt Bev, but generally because you have a somewhat different intellectual makeup than the majority of Mormons (and the majority of people, period). You think about slightly different things, and you think and talk about things in a slightly different way. Perhaps neither better nor worse, but different. You probably think of yourself as an intellectual—or informed, or thoughtful, or whatever-adjective-having-to-do-with-higher-brain-function-you-choose—and other people generally see you the same way.

You know that many Mormons are a bit suspicious of “intellectuals,” not because Mormons are dumb, but because “intellectuals” sometimes talk in ways that are unfamiliar or challenging or seemingly heterodox—in short, different. And to be labeled as “differentâ€? when you move into a ward creates some problems for you, both for your social life and in terms of what callings you receive, etc. This is not ideal, we would probably agree, but I think it is generally true. You know you have interesting things to say, and interesting ways of looking at things, and you want to contribute your perspective and experience to your new ward. But you’re also afraid of being labeled “differentâ€? if the first words out of your mouth are “different.â€? What to do? Here’s where spiritual capital comes in.

I think that if you’ve built up enough spiritual capital in a ward, then you can spend that spiritual capital in contributing your unique perspective. Spiritual capital is built by participating in all the “ordinary� aspects of church life, which people generally recognize as virtuous within the church: you serve in callings, you home teach and visit teach, you volunteer to help people move or to take meals, you show up pretty much every week, you act friendly, etc. You don’t have to pretend you’re someone you’re not (so here I’m talking to someone who values the behaviors I just listed). Before too long, you’ve built up enough spiritual capital that you can start to spend it.

Let me talk in more personal, concrete terms. I’ve been in my ward for seven years, serving in all kinds of callings, and generally trying to be a contributing member of the ward. Over that time, I’ve built up a fair amount of spiritual capital that I can choose to spend as I want—in other words, I’m able to say some pretty “high-cost� things in classes because I know my comment won’t be seen as having “insufficient funds� behind it. For instance, a few months ago, my wife & I were having dinner with an established family in the ward (he’s in the bishopric, she was stake YW pres, their sons all serve missions, etc.). I don’t know how it came up, but we started talking about Joseph Smith & the Book of Mormon, and before you knew it, I was blabbing about seerstones and folk magic. This was the first they had ever heard of such shocking details, and they had plenty of questions. I put these details into a faithful perspective, and shortly thereafter, I was asked to give a ward fireside about the translation of the Book of Mormon, with a specific request to talk about seerstones. Then, in a Primary activity a couple months ago, this same member of the bishopric taught the kids about how Joseph translated the Book of Mormon by staring into a hat.

For me, this was spiritual capital well-spent, as I think there is real spiritual and pedagogical value to telling our story correctly, and in wrestling with the truth rather than a sanitized or fabricated version of it. You may spend your spiritual capital in other ways, whether it is talking about women’s issues or whatever. But I am convinced that if I did not have sufficient spiritual capital, my “different� notions of BofM translation would have been marginalized or seen as destructive, rather than seen as a means of nurturing faith, even in the young.

I should add that I think our capital is only well-spent, and will only “produce additional goods,� when it is done with pure intent, in the service of the Kingdom, not in the service of our own intellect or ego.

A decade later, and especially as a member of a ward where a lot of missionary work is done (and lots more could be done), I find myself rethinking the mantra that was pounded in my head while I was pounding the pavement. Of course, I still believe that a deep spiritual witness of the truthfulness of the restored gospel is the single most important factor in whether or not someone should join the church. But nowadays I’m more inclined to think that spiritual conversion comes quicker and (dare I say) easier than does social conversion.

This is purely anecdotal, but in my personal interactions with them I have found that among the roughly two dozen people who have been baptized in my ward over the past 2-3 years, virtually all of them have had significant spiritual experiences. Most of them bear testimony that they know or feel that the church is true, that Joseph Smith and Gordon Hinckley are prophets, that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, etc. They may not fully comprehend what all that means or be able to articulate any of it in a nuanced way, but they have felt the Spirit’s witness of truth, and they have accepted it as authentic and personal. They generally feel the Spirit when the read the Book of Mormon, meet with the missionaries, and come to church. And then they go inactive–some within weeks of their baptism, others within months. But in at least 75% of the cases, we don’t see them at church anymore.

I don’t think it’s the missionaries’ fault. They’re not baptizing people they met yesterday. I don’t think it’s the ward mission’s fault, as we’ve had good ward mission leaders and good ward missionaries. I don’t think it’s the ward’s fault, as we have an excellent bishop who genuinely loves and cares about the new converts, and we have scores of members who have made personal sacrifices in giving people rides, going on exchanges with the missionaries, inviting investigators and new converts into their homes, etc. None of us are perfect, but I believe we’re all trying hard, and none of us want the new members to get baptized and then never come back.

Retention is a huge issue around the church, and one that the General Authorities, and Pres. Hinckley in particular, have been hounding us about (in a good way) for several years. And it is probably slightly different in every ward and stake. But in my limited experience I have found that the most serious obstacles in retaining new converts are not spiritual, but rather social and cultural. In particular, I find race and class to be the most serious stumblingblocks to making and keeping large numbers of converts.

The LDS church is an American, white, middle-class church. Of course I believe that its message and aspirations are universal, but on the ground its origins, demographics, values, and organizational structure are solidly rooted in the white American middle class, particularly as it was formulated from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, with emphases (and we could certainly list others) on thrift, decorum, kindness, hard work, patriotism and/or civic pride, respect for authority, and most of all the Victorian family model. (I should say that I am not making a criticism here, simply an observation — I certainly prefer all these things to their opposites.)

Most of our converts, at least in my ward, are either non-white or poor (or both). In my seven years in the ward, we have never baptized a middle- or upper-class family, white or non-white (there was one in the next ward over who went inactive and then moved into our ward). As I said, most of these people are earnest seekers of truth and/or the good life, who have felt the goodness in the gospel and the witness of the Spirit. They are spiritually converted, or at least have had the seeds planted and beginning to grow and bear fruit. But when they come to church, they don’t find anyone who is really like them, and they often feel the active (white middle-class English-speaking) members of the ward don’t fully understand them, and vice versa.

There are deep cultural divides between whites, Hispanics, and blacks, and (I believe) even deeper disconnects between members of the lower classes and members of the middle and upper-middle classes. Most of the new converts don’t have cars, and so require rides to church. Many of them have unstable and unpredictable lives, and aren’t used to getting up for 9:00 church, and so they often aren’t there or not ready when people come to pick them up, creating frustration and ultimately some resentment. When they do come to church, they often feel out of place because their clothing is not as nice as most members’. There is a serious social chasm between them and most active members — what does a black single mother in public housing have in common with a PhD student in philosophy, or a medical resident, or a middle-aged businessman? Many of the new converts live in neighborhoods where the sisters in the ward understandably do not want to go or take their children, especially alone or in the evenings. When African American converts come, they see a sea of white faces–we have a fairly diverse ward by Mormon standards (we actually have African American members!), but when you come from an all-black neighborhood and an all-black church it can be intimidating. One of our biggest problems is that when people join the church and start to better their lives, they go out and get jobs (as we encourage them), but they are often limited to low-wage entry-level positions in retail, food, janitorial, or housekeeping, which requires them to work on Sunday.

These people have felt the Spirit. They have made covenants. They want to be part of the kingdom of God. They are our brothers and sisters, both as children of God and as disciples of Christ. We want them to be among us, and to stay among us. How do we make it happen?

It is called the Holy Land for a reason – religion is inescapable. Even when you’re not in the Old City (where most of the holy sites are), you can’t escape religion — the Dome of the Rock and church spires dominate the skyline, you see orthodox Jews in their distinctive clothing, and you hear the Muslim call to prayer over the loudspeakers several times a day. In a place where the absolute and transcendent are so ingrained in the land and the daily rhythms of life, it’s not a surprise that people feel so deeply about their conflicting identities.

In many ways it verified for me, in very tangible ways, that extremism is in fact the religious norm, given religion’s claim on the ultimate, and that it is moderation that we have to explain and work toward. (Here I am borrowing from the argument in Charles Liebman, “Extremism as a Religious Norm,â€? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 22 (1983): 75-86.) Of course, religion can also work for peace and justice, not just violence and exclusion—Martin Luther King was proud to call himself an extremist in the Letter from a Birmingham Jail, and used the same term to describe Jesus and Paul. But it takes considerable courage, creativity, and strength to work for peace – it is much easier to channel one’s absolutism into a desire for domination, especially in a historically conflictive locale.

The reason we went was for a conference called “Whence the Heavenly Jerusalem? The Politics of Sacred Space and the Pursuit of Peace.” It was about as interesting as academic conferences get, largely because it wasn’t all academics. There were several panelists and presenters from the area, representing secular and religious Jews (including two Jewish settler women), Muslims, and Palestinian Christians. I’ve never been in an academic setting where two women got into a sustained shouting match, in this case over the use of the word “holocaust,” but it was revealing as to the depth of feeling over history and words, and how those things have real meaning in people’s lives and worldviews. My paper, on Mormonism’s presence in the Holy Land, was well received but ultimately unimportant in the larger scheme of things — the LDS presence simply isn’t very significant over there, and I said as much. (It’s not often that I give conference presentations in which a major part of my argument is that my topic isn’t all that important, but I felt it would trivialize the real parties in the contest if I were to pretend that Mormons had some deep stake in the matter.)

Besides the conference, we had about four days to explore, which we took full advantage of. Obviously we couldn’t see everything, but we got a very good sense of the Old City, seeing all the major sites and many of the other less famous sites that we had identified as interesting. The Western Wall (actually the retaining wall of the temple, not the actual wall), Judaism’s most holy place, is really quite remarkable. We visited twice, and I had a deep spiritual feeling about it the second time — particularly as I sensed how meaningful it was to all the people around me who were praying. I said a prayer for peace as I stood at the wall; I was jarred when I turned around and saw a young man praying just a few feet away with an automatic rifle slung on his shoulder (probably a soldier on break).

I also loved the Haram al-Sharieff (sp?), or the Temple Mount. Non-Muslims aren’t allowed in the Dome of the Rock or the Al-Aqsa Mosque, but it was impressive just to be up on the mount where so much sacred history has occurred — from Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac/Ishmael to Solomon’s temple to Herod’s temple (where Jesus taught) to the current Dome (the third holiest site for Islam). It’s too bad the conflict keeps us out of some of Islam’s holy places, as I would have liked to have visited, less as a tourist and more as a fellow
religious traveler.

Also intriguing, although simultaneously disappointing, was the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the holiest site for Catholic and Orthodox Christians (most Protestants believe the crucifixion and tomb are at the Garden Tomb, which is outside the city walls and more pleasing to modern Western sensibilities). I was moved by the faith of the Lenten pilgrims, for whom this was clearly an incredibly momentous occasion, but it was so crowded, and several people acted quite rudely and un-Christian, that it was hard for me to get a sense of the holiness of the place. There was a nice moment, however, when a beam of sunlight from a skylight above shone down on Christ’s tomb. Most disappointing is that the church is in relative disrepair because the six churches that own it hate each other so much that they can’t come up with a plan to renovate and restore the church; they each have their own little fiefdoms within the church and are quite territorial — the tomb has had scaffolding on it since the 1920s because they can’t agree on a plan for how to restore it. Conflict is often the
most bitter between close brothers, not among distant cousins.

Walking along and then down the side of the Mount of Olives was a wonderful experience, particularly as I thought about how much Jesus loved to visit the Mount to pray and teach his disciples. When we went in the grotto at Gethsemane where some believe He performed the Atonement, there was a group of Asian Christians singing “Nearer My God to Thee” (in their native tongue), which was simple and touching. Seeing believers from around the world gave me more of a sense of the global reach of Christianity than anything I’ve ever experienced.

The most educational part of the trip was our trip to Hebron, which is a Palestinian city in the West Bank, but which was the first site of Jewish settlements after the 1967 war and which is now occupied by Israeli troops (approx. 1800 troops to protect 500-600 settlers). We went to see the Tomb of the Patriarchs (which houses Abraham & Sarah, Isaac & Rebekah, and Jacob & Leah), which itself is a sad testimony to the division of the place – since a massacre of praying Muslims by a Jewish doctor several years ago, it has been separated into Jewish and Muslim sides, so Jews cannot enter the Muslim side and vice versa (Christians can go in either side). This complicated things for our group, since we had Christians, Jews, and Muslims, but the Jews agreed to not admit they were Jewish (which was a poor compromise but perhaps our only option), and we went in the Muslim side.

On our way back to the bus from the tomb, we were walking through some very dilapidated neighborhoods. Palestinian communities are typically poor, but these were even worse. Even stranger was that there was a fence above our heads with all kinds of garbage and debris on it. My first impression was that it was a dirty ghetto, but then our guide explained that we were walking under one of the areas of Jewish settlement, and the Palestinians put up the fence above the walkway because the settlers constantly throw trash, baby diapers, rotten food, etc. on people walking below. In addition, the Israeli soldiers block off any of the roads near the settlements and patrol heavily, so Palestinians have basically abandoned those areas, which means people losing their homes and businesses with no compensation.

It was at this point that we walked past a guard tower, on the corner of the settlers’ school, and were stopped by the squad of teenage soldiers stationed there. There was no reason for them to stop us, other than boredom on their part, and even less reason to detain us for over an hour — we were clearly an international group, mostly Americans, walking back to our tour bus. But we were forced to stop and stand in the sun — if we were Palestinians it would have been with our faces against the wall — and they even slipped a microphone out the window to listen to our riveting conversation. Although the situation was less than ideal, it gave us a chance to meet several Palestinian boys, teenagers and younger, who flocked around us. Some of them tried to act tough, but one boy in particular was eager to engage us in conversation. He told us he didn’t smoke (as opposed to one of the “toughsâ€? who was puffing away), clearly trying to communicate that he was a good kid. When the guards finally let us go, he smiled and said, “I love you.â€? In the midst of terribly dehumanizing circumstances, it was one of the most deeply human moments of my life.

The experience in Hebron gave me the smallest flavor of the degrading nature of the Israeli occupation–there really is no other word–and the deep damage that they are doing to Palestinian communities. The only parallels I could draw were to the Jim Crow South and to South Africa under apartheid. This is not a holocaust, as some Palestinians in their anger are wont to say, but it does feature many of the worst forms of colonialism, imperialism, occupation, exploitation, racism, and the ugliness of brute power.

I am sympathetic to the Israeli desire (and need) for security, but they are mortgaging their long-term security and even their humanity for short-term solutions that are in fact only exacerbating Palestinian disappointment, frustration, resentment, and ultimately rage and hatred. It doesn’t help that the Palestinians spend so much time fighting each other that they can’t provide a unified voice against Israeli abuses, or to stop terror from within their communities. The policy of the US and Israel to undermine confidence in the new Hamas government is working brilliantly, although I’m not sure that a plan leading to brilliant failure of a democratically elected government and then a brilliant escalation in violence is all that brilliant.

My memory may not be entirely precise on that, and the whole thing may be apocryphal (or just a senior missionary having some fun with some teenagers), but I’ve thought about it ever since. Based on that and a recent conversation with Mark Ashurst-McGee (one of our best young scholars on Joseph Smith), I’ve been thinking about sacred sites and memory. Let me give a couple more examples, then share some thoughts and pose some questions.

Example #1: There’s a pretty good chance Joseph Smith cut down the Sacred Grove. The Smith family spent their first several years in Palmyra clearing their farm, which would have lasted well beyond 1820. And we know that Joseph had marked the spot where he wanted to pray by leaving his axe in a tree stump the day before. So it probably wasn’t too far from the log cabin, around which they would have been clearing land at the time. And if you’ve been to the site, which has been nicely restored by the Church, you know that the land all around the cabin was entirely cleared of trees by the Smiths in the dozen or so years they lived there. The spot that we now call the Sacred Grove—where countless thousands of LDS pilgrims have prayed and settled on a spot where they say “this is the place�—is in fact part of the old-growth forest, and was part of the Smiths’ homestead. But it seems unlikely, though not entirely impossible, that Joseph bothered to go so far from his house to pray, when there would have been plenty of as-yet-uncleared woods much nearer. If this is all true, then the spot where he saw the Father and the Son would have been cleared of trees by the family in the ensuing months or years, and then farmed on (which includes plowing, planting, laying manure, etc.).

Example #2: One of the big controversies now regarding Mormon historical sites is whether or not we’ve got the wrong Martin’s Cove, as in the place where the Martin handcart company found shelter from a raging Wyoming blizzard for a few days in 1856 before moving on. The traditional site, which is on BLM land but which has trails and signs posted by the Church, was identified much later, and without the direct help of any actual participants. Recent scholarship by Lydia Carter, presented at the MHA, suggests that the real cove is a mile or two further northwest. This year there will be tens of thousands of youth who go to Martin’s Cove and pull handcarts. The senior missionaries who are guides at the site will take them to the traditional cove and bear earnest testimony that “this is the place� where people suffered and died.

Example #3: My wife and I were in Jerusalem in March as part of an international conference dealing with conflict over sacred space. I was struck with many things, some of which I may post on later, but one thing that was particularly poignant was the argument over the place of Christ’s crucifixion and burial. For centuries virtually all Christians agreed upon the traditional site, identified by St. Helena in the 4th (5th?) c., which is now where the Church of the Holy Sepulcher stands. In the nineteenth century, British(?) archaeologists identified another set of stone tombs just outside the present city wall that has come to be known as the Garden Tomb, and which is the site accepted by many Protestant groups, but rejected by Catholics and Orthodox and most scholars. This is where Pres. Kimball went and said he had a strong feeling that “this is the place.�

Does any of this matter? Does it matter that we know (or don’t know) where the precise spot of the First Vision is? Does it matter which cove was really the place where pioneers suffered and died? Does it matter which of the two tombs (if either) Christ was buried in, and also presumably where He was resurrected and saw Mary? Does it matter if people have a probably counterfeit piece of Adam’s altar on their fireplace mantle?

On the one hand, I’m inclined to say WHO CARES? On the other hand, it was special for me to go to the Kirtland Temple and see the actual spot where I believe Joseph and Oliver saw the risen Christ on April 3, 1836 (see D&C 110). Most of my Catholic students are troubled by the historicity of Mormonism—they prefer the historical details of their faith to be shrouded in the fog of ancient history and mystery. I think they are uncomfortable reconciling their faith in improbable supernatural events (like the Resurrection) and their modern faith in verifiable science. I love the fact that Mormon history is so close, so tangible. For me part of the beauty of Mormonism is its collapse of the distance between the sacred and the profane—temples are the most obvious place where we sanctify earthly space and time.

For me it’s also a pedagogical issue. The missionaries at Martin’s Cove, I am told, bristle when anyone suggests that “their� cove may not be the right one. They have too much invested—they have received and dispensed their personal witness. And all those people who make their hajj to Palmyra who want to kneel where Joseph knelt and see, if only in their mind’s eye, what he saw. It all speaks to the literalism that is so characteristic of most sectors of modern Mormonism. It’s a literalism born of the Enlightenment and then applied to religion. Protestants did it first, with the Scottish common-sense movement that was influential in shaping modern evangelicalism and fundamentalism, and we have essentially adopted it. People want to know the spot, just as they want to know the answer and the way.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if in our pedagogy we allowed for multiple spots, multiple answers, and multiple ways? Not on the essentials, mind you—there is only one Savior, and He is the Way, the Truth, the Light, and the Life. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were fifteen ways to read Jesus’ genealogy (as Julie has so beautifully shown us), not just one? What would it do if we took our youth to Martin’s Cove and said, “We don’t know which cove it was, but the story is still important�? Or if at the Sacred Grove we told our children, “This probably isn’t the spot, but it’s close, and we can still have a moment of quiet prayer that strengthens our testimony of God entering modern space and time�? Or do we need to identify and mark the exact place, or stick with our best guess in the meantime?

Does it matter?

1. A loss of priesthood authority, and especially the apostolic keys, following the death of the apostles (ca. 100 CE in the Old World, 400 CE in the New); this also connects with the loss of the one true church. If we want to be specific, we could call this “ecclesiastical apostasy.�

2. A fragmentation or loss of doctrinal truth after the death of the apostles. We can refer to this as “doctrinal apostasy.�

3. An individual person turning away from the true gospel after having once received it, usually referring to someone who actively rejects rather than someone who becomes lukewarm or passively indifferent. This is “personal apostasy.�

Apostasy is a big problem. Perhaps not quite as big a problem as the Fall, but big enough to have an entire historical period (in LDS history/cosmology) named after it, labeled “Great� (as in “great and abominable,� not “gee whiz, this milkshake is great�), and often given a capital-A.

When we talk about solving the problem of apostasy, we also think of it based on the three forms above. From an LDS point of view, ecclesiastical hierarchy isn’t a problem anymore – John the Baptist, then Peter, James, and John, took care of that in 1829 (there’s some debate about whether the apostleship was restored in 1830 or thereafter, following the organization of the church, but we definitely have it now). Doctrinal apostasy, on a large scale, was solved with the restoration of true doctrine through revelation to the Prophet Joseph Smith and other modern-day seers and revelators. As per Article of Faith 9, we think there’s more to come, but we certainly believe that since 1844 we have had the essential doctrines of salvation and exaltation restored to us. Of course, most people in the world still live individually under the cloud of doctrinal apostasy, so we go about solving that with missionary work, bringing truth to all who will listen. (I suppose ordinances then solve the problem of individual ecclesiastical apostasy.) Individual or personal apostasy, in which someone has rejected the truth once accepted, is often difficult to overcome, but it also basically entails individual and communal ministering to the strayed sheep (or kicking goat, as the case may be).

While I think these three definitions of apostasy, and the ways we approach them, are fully accurate, acceptable, and real, I think Joseph Smith thought of apostasy in one more way that we often ignore. I call it “structural apostasy.�

We often quote D&C 121 and 122, two excerpts of the letter from Liberty Jail, penned by Joseph (some or all of it given by revelation) in execrable conditions in March 1839 and then sent to the church. We pay considerably less attention to D&C 123, also from the same letter. To get a flavor, let me quote vv. 7-8 in full:

“It is an imperative duty that we owe to God, to angels, with whom we shall be brought to stand, and also to ourselves, to our wives and children, who have been made to bow down with grief, sorrow, and care, under the most damning hand of murder, tyranny, and oppression, supported and urged on and upheld by the influence of that spirit which hath so strongly riveted the creeds of the fathers, who have inherited lies, upon the hearts of the children, and filled the world with confusion, and has been growing stronger and stronger, and is now the very mainspring of all corruption, and the whole earth groans under the weight of its iniquity. It is an iron yoke, it is a strong band; they are the very handcuffs, and chains, and shackles, and fetters of hell.�

This passage best represents what I call “structural apostasy.� Joseph, who suffered his share of “murder, tyranny, and oppression,� asserts that these conditions which he and the Saints found themselves in, and indeed “all corruption� in the earth, owe to “the creeds of the fathers,� which were based on “lies.� For Joseph, apostasy was not only about false belief or false authority. It also entailed murder, tyranny, oppression, and corruption, which refer not to the ecclesiastical order but to the political, social, and economic order. All the structures of society which pit people against one another in anything less than the bonds of charity flow from the “mainspring� of apostasy. Apostasy is essentially the inverse of Zion. If a Zion society, as we get glimpses of in 4 Nephi and Moses 7, has structures based on love, peace, equality, and all things in common, then an apostate society is based on hatred, warfare, inequality, and disparity. Just as Zion is not just a group of people who believe the right things and have the right priesthood authority—although it certainly includes, and is based on, just that—so apostasy is not just people who believe wrong or don’t have priesthood (although it certainly includes that).

After thus describing apostasy, Joseph tells the Saints that it is their “imperative duty� to “waste and wear out our lives� in countering apostasy and its effects (vv. 11, 13). Here’s my punchline: Missionary work, home/visiting teaching, obeying the Word of Wisdom, going to church on Sunday, and stockpiling wheat in our basement are not the only ways to fight apostasy in the world today. They are important, even essential ways, but not the only ways. Those who seek to counter structural apostasy in all its forms—poverty, warfare, sexism, racism, imperialism, colonialism, illiteracy, domestic abuse, drug dependency, political corruption, corporate corruption, environmental degradation, police abuse, to name a few—are also doing the work that Joseph (and I believe the Lord) called us to do.

We are not Protestant dispensational premillennialists. We do not believe, as did 19th-c. evangelist Dwight Moody, that the world is a sinking ship and that God has given us a lifeboat and told us to rescue as many souls as we can, essentially abandoning the ship altogether. We often slip into talking this way, especially because it has become the predominant mode of Christian millenarian discourse since World War II, and we cite scriptures which seem to resonate with such an interpretation. But we are stewards of the world and all our brothers and sisters in it. Humanitarianism is neither a waste of time nor simply a PR stunt to grease the wheels for our missionaries. It is part of God’s work in the world.

I am not saying we should spend less time fighting the more apparently spiritual aspects of apostasy—if anything, we should step up, not slow down, our evangelism. But if we ignore the “iron yoke� of structural apostasy and its devastating effects in our communities and throughout the world, we are not living up the grand vision of transforming society that Joseph bequeathed us, and which I believe God would have us do in building Zion in all the world.

I should say at the outset that I’m quite pleased to be here. I’m particularly honored to be invited by Ben Huff, who has been a close friend during my seven years here in South Bend, Indiana. Those of you who read the virtual Ben Huff know his incisive mind and profound thoughtfulness about all things moral, ethical, and spiritual. Those of us who know him in person are blessed with his warmth, wit, laughter, loyalty, compassion, deep integrity, and friendship in its truest forms. He is one of the deepest and most endearing people I know. I was also fortunate to be in South Bend during Adam Greenwood’s all-too-brief (and all-too-full) three years here. We had many a late-night chat that often ended with me thinking that there is no one in this world who drives me crazier but also inspires and teaches me more than Adam. I probably just drove him crazy.

Notre Dame has been my home for several years now, first as a graduate student in American history and now as a guy with a Ph.D. who is hanging around trying to figure out what the rest of his life will look like. When I came here I said I would stay until the football team wins a national championship. I’m still here.

The best thing about South Bend has been meeting and marrying one Melissa De Leon. The first thing my mom said when I told her I was going to Notre Dame was, “Notre Dame? How are you going to find a good Mormon girl there?� It took a circuitous route, but the short answer is that Providence is alive and well, and it helped me immensely to be in a ward where there were very few other single men to vie for an attractive and accomplished woman’s attention and ultimately affection. At the end of this month we celebrate our 18-month anniversary…yes, we’re still in the counting-months stage.

Professionally, I study race, religion, and violence. I don’t think the question, “Why can’t we all just get along?� is as silly as it sounds. Like President Hinckley in his most recent address in priesthood session, I just have a hard time figuring out why people are so ugly to one another. Many people don’t like studying violence because it’s depressing. Peaceable by nature, I think I’m able to study racism, bigotry, and violence—the darkness in human history—because I’m quite confident in the power of the light of Christ to guide me, and us, back. I suppose I’m a bit naïve.

Finally, when I was at the MHA conference a couple weeks ago, I looked around and thought to myself, “This is where I belong. These are my people.â€? I always feel like a bit of an interloper in the broader academic world, not because anyone has told me I don’t belong, but because I’m not always sure I want to fully belong—but then again, perhaps it is only sanity to feel like a stranger in a strange land when the land is indeed strange. My experience is that most academics–even, or especially, the religious ones–think that Mormonism is ridiculous and that Mormons are fascinating. I take both as compliments (although it took me a while to sort out the first part). I’ve never had the seemingly requisite crisis of faith and/or identity, simply a series of rediscoveries of what Mormonism is that never cease to surprise, delight, and madden me, often in ways that I can’t distinguish between the three.