Seeking by study and by faith in Nauvoo.

We visited Nauvoo last weekend. Being only half a day's drive away and having Grandparents (free lodging and food) left us with little reason not to do it eventually. Last weekend we had the time, and we availed ourselves.

We saw the LDS sites Saturday. Sunday we drove down to see Carthage (also run by the LDS church). Monday we saw a few LDS sites in the morning before taking the Community of Christ tour in the afternoon. At the LDS sites we saw the blacksmith shop, the family living center (demonstrations on how they made bread, rope, rugs, baskets, etc.), the Heber C. Kimball Home, the Wilford Woodruff home, the Brigham Young home, and the Sarah Granger home. We also saw a play put on by the performing missionaries at the visitor's center and went on a wagon ride around old Nauvoo. The LDS sites are open on a walk-in basis, which gives a lot of freedom to the visitor to be flexible with what he wants to see. The Community of Christ sites (with the exception of the Red Brick Store) are open only as part of a tour of the whole area. The tour starts off in the visitors center, goes to see the graves of Joseph, Hyrum, and Emma Smith, then to the Smith Homestead, then to the Nauvoo House, then the Mansion House, and ends at the Red Brick Store.

Dave had a good post over at T&S about what goes into the management of historical sites. It's worth reading and leads one to appreciate the complexity of that job and the relative competence with which it is done. Right now, though, I'm more intrigued by the differences in historical presentation between the two latter-day saint tradition churches in Nauvoo.

I.
First the LDS sites. The one difference between the LDS sites in Nauvoo and other church history sites I've seen is that this time the missionaries made no effort to get us to fill out referral cards. I heard at least two missionaries specifically say that the Nauvoo Mission is a mission more to "strengthen the members" than to proselyte. I wonder if this is a recent change in emphasis. Other than that, it was pretty much what you see at most Church history sites: a tour, a story, and a testimony. There was more emotion, more sentimentality, more personal connection, and more passion. In the blacksmith shop and the family living center, however, there was less spiritual emphasis and more of a focus on hands-on experience and getting an idea of what life was like in the 19th Century. The Visitor's Center was similar to most LDS Visitor's Center's I've seen. There was a big information desk with lots of pamphlets, a diorama of Nauvoo, a few theaters, some art exhibits, and a huge copy of the Christus right in the center of the room. It was also full of loud families with lots of kids. There was no souvenir shop, nothing for sale. Altogether, it was a pleasant, fun, family-oriented building.

The first difference I noticed when we entered the Community of Christ visitor's center is that it was much quieter. Acoustic arrangements of some of the early Mormon hymns were played in the background. It made for a more reverent atmosphere (though this might have been because we were the only ones there). A young bearded man greeted us, told us when the tours would begin, and invited us to have a look around. First we had a look at the small gift shop. I was surprised to find some real historical titles. I expected some fun little story books, but instead, they had Bushman's and Donna Hill's Joseph Smith biographies, Dan Vogel's and Grant Palmer's books, a two volume set of the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon, and lots of other serious academic studies. In the main room, there was an original sunstone and moonstone. They also had the southeast cornerstone from the temple on display. The cornerstone was fashioned as a stone box, inside of which was placed a time capsule of sorts containing a copy of the original Book of Mormon manuscript, some periodicals, some coins, other memorabilia. Most surprising to me was that they had an original first edition Book of Mormon on display and it was only behind a regular glass display door, not like the sealed glass case that houses an original first edition at the LDS-run Grandin Printing Press in Palmyra. In keeping with the academic orientation of the books at the gift shop, the Community of Christ tour was very historical, very fact-oriented, not at all emotional, sentimental, or spiritual. Our guide was knowledgeable enough to answer specific questions about names and dates by citing historical authorities. There was no testifying. We were not invited to learn more about the spiritual or doctrinal message of the Community of Christ.

II.
On the one hand, I really appreciated a break from the sentimentality and seeming emotional manipulation that you sometimes get from the LDS tour guides. I appreciated being able to get good authoritative answers to specific historical questions, answers that I could look up and verify. I enjoyed hearing more about the surrounding economic and social context of the events described to create a fuller picture combined with the spiritual context. I was glad to learn more about the Smith family that stayed in Nauvoo. I liked the relaxed nature of a tour without a proselyting goal. We were treated very politely and respectfully.

But I missed some of the passion and personality that you get from the senior couples at the LDS sites. I missed hearing about why this is important to the person speaking. I missed the spiritual conviction that we felt at Carthage. This sense of missing something became most poignant in the upper room of the Red Brick Store. Sitting in the room where endowments and sealings were first introduced, I wanted hear about it. But the endowment and sealing ordinances, the most complex and interesting and the most exalting of the ordinances revealed by Joseph Smith, were reduced to a footnote, almost an afterthought; no more notable than the muslin covering on the desk where Joseph would record his purchases. It was here especially that I felt that something important had been lost along with all the sentimentality and emotional gushing.

III.
Emotions are a funny thing. They are so easily confused with the promptings of the Spirit that they are often mistaken for them, and sometimes missionaries, both the proselyting and the tour guide kinds, try to invite the spirit by tugging at the emotions. Usually, it doesn't work, and usually it leaves someone feeling awkward and uncomfortable. (Remember, the Spirit is called the Comforter). By contrast, the Spirit is supposed to edify. I've seen too many people mistake a rush of emotion for a spiritual manifestation of some kind, putting their faith in it, only to have it come up shallow later on and conclude that the spirit is all a farse and the gospel isn't true. It's for these reasons that I wish we could purge ourselves from sentimentality and emotional manipulation.

I'm also reminded that, according to Joseph Smith's prayer at the dedication of the Kirtland temple, were should not seek spiritual experiences alone; we are also supposed to seek learning as well---not just by faith, but "by study, and also by faith." I don't expect a tour guide to present the tour with the knowledge of a professional historian. It would be long, boring, and irrelevant to most of the patrons. But a tour guide is a teacher and a teacher ought to know his material more deeply than he teaches it. Truth, according to the revelations, is not just an abstract spiritual experience, but is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were. Truth, especially historical truth, is inherently fact-based. It is true that often we can do no better than approximations and guesses, but our guesses ought to be as good as we can get, as faithful to the historical record as we can be. Joseph Smith, taking a cue from Paul, warned the early saints to avoid zeal without knowledge (see Nibley's discussion of Joseph's warning).

The Community of Christ tours seemed to have a better handle on this kind of fact based history. But on the other hand, as Paul says, "knowledge", unchecked by charity, "puffeth up". Spiritual things cannot always find expression in the language of the knowledgeable. The omission of endowments from the Red Brick Store left me feeling like I had missed out. The LDS missionaries were less knowledgeable, but more personal; less accurate, but more memorable; less academic, but more passionate. Something was gained, and something was lost.

So my question is this: does a re-orientation towards a more historically accurate approach necessarily lead to a loss of conviction? Or is it possible to be both knowledgeable and spiritual? Is there something that the LDS site missionaries and the Community of Christ tour staff could learn from each other? How can we both improve our presentation of history?

Is it unethical to preach the gospel?

I asked myself this question last night. My job (a law clerk for a legal services organization that serves migrant farmworkers) is constantly inviting me to make comparisons with my missionary service. Like my time as a missionary, I work with Latinos, mostly Mexicans, in the U.S., who live off of field work. Like missionaries, I visit my clients in their homes. Like missionaries, I have to gain my clients' trust. Heck, I even drive a 1999 Sentra like when I was a missionary.

9:00 PM. Last night was a late night. As I met with a client family in a trailer park in a small town in western Minnesota, I couldn't help but be brought back to my mission service. Especially when my client asked me: ¿Cómo aprendiste el español? I explained to him that I was a missionary for my church a few years ago in Arizona. His face glowed with recognition and he said that he had had visits from Mormon elders at his home in Texas. At that point, I would have responded with a follow up question: how did you like it? Or, why did you stop meeting with them? Or, did you ever go to church? Or, would you like me to have the elders here visit you?

I would have. But I stopped myself. I hesitated. It didn't feel right. Somehow, it had the feel of an abuse of authority, or an impermissible blending of church and state, or a violation of the legal services non-solicitation policy, or some other verboten thing. Even though it wasn't strictly any of those things, it felt like something of that nature.

9:15 PM. We finished up our interview and I packed up my client files securely. We shook hands. ¡Que Diós te bendiga! I heard my client exclaim as I got in the car. As I drove to my temporary 3-day-a-week apartment, I wondered why it was that I felt like it was wrong of me to preach the gospel at that moment. The best answer I came up with was that my relationship with my clients, is one of professional advice and counsel, and that the gospel is outside the bounds of that relationship. They come to me to find out what to do. I, after conferring with a licensed attorney, then give them the advice they seek. Even though I explain that I am only a law clerk, not a licensed attorney, they still see me as some kind of professional authority figure. I am entrusted with that authority for the specific purpose of giving them legal advice and counsel. To give, unsolicited, religious counsel would seem like a breach of that trust.

I don't mean that I would never speak about the church with a client. If a client asked me about the church, I would respond. If a client asked me about a non-legal matter, I would be likely to draw on relevant gospel-related experiences. But somehow, it feels wrong to "look for an opening" to share the gospel like I might do in another situation.

But is that just an attempt to artificially separate my gospel self from my professional self? At some level, my understanding of the law is founded on my understanding of justice, which is founded on my understanding of religious truths. The gospel really does infuse everything I do, like it or not. So is my attempt to banish it a Canute-like futility?

Or again, is my sense that it would be wrong to preach the gospel in that situation nothing more than an excuse? Is it really my human reluctance to share personal things (what could be more personal than religion) with people I've just met? Maybe I'm justifying after the fact my failure to share the gospel by rationalizing that I probably shouldn't have anyway.

Or is my hunch right? Is it unethical in some situations to preach the gospel?

I know that sometimes it is illegal to preach the gospel. And I suppose that some might argue that given our belief "in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, magistrates, and obeying honoring and sustaining the law," the very fact that it is illegal makes it wrong. But I can't accept that as an absolute. That would mean that Daniel and the three Hebrew children were wrong to disobey their king. It would also mean that Helmut Hubner was wrong to oppose Hitler. Scripture and conscience don't allow those conclusions for me.

Maybe a discussion of "ethical" would be helpful. I've always liked Kant's expression that it is unethical to use a human being for the benefit of another because it is a nice critique of hard materialist utilitarianism. I'm not sure how that relates to my question, though. Preaching the gospel is not using anyone. I suppose I am using the situation, but it is not for my benefit, but for the benefit of the other. Then again, perhaps I am not qualified to decide what is in another's best interest because that would rob him of a sacred autonomy. A utilitarian ethicist would simply balance the potential harm from me preaching the gospel against the potential good it would do. But this doesn't work here because the potential good is infinite, great enough to justify the spilling of God's blood. How can you balance anything against infinity?

Ethics is weird for me because I feel like I have a pretty strong sense of right and wrong, but it is highly intuitive sense, not a rational sense. For me, the abuse or misuse of authority of authority is important to ethics. The idea of trust and its betrayal is also an important ingredient. Maybe this idea subsumes the former; a misuse of authority is fundamentally a betrayal of trust. If it is unethical to preach the gospel, maybe it is ethics that is flawed. Ethics for me is a matter of conscience, but is defined to most of the world by philosopher and scholars working in rational proofs.

Should ethics be defined by reason or by intuition? Is religion (and with it the injunction to preach to all the world) superior to ethics because it is revealed truth rather than merely rational or intuitive truth? Then again, given what we Mormons believe about the light of Christ, what is the difference between revealed truth and intuitive truth?

Or is it just that there are exceptions to the command to take the gospel to all the world? I don't like the idea of there being exceptions because it might lead us to assume that some people's immediate spiritual salvation is worth less than others' to God. The Lord certainly doesn't qualify it in scriptural language. But then again he also doesn't qualify "thou shalt not kill" and yet we accept that he appears to command Abraham, Joshua, Nephi, and others to do just that. If there are exceptions to the mission to proclaim the gospel, is there a way to recognize these exceptions without giving room to justify laziness in our mission?

But maybe the exceptions idea isn't the right approach. Maybe it's not a matter of if this particular person or group should hear the gospel, but when. I think of the 11th hour laborers. The fact that they were called later did not devalue their labor. In fact, their work was worth more to the lord per hour in strict economic terms. Given what we believe about our post-mortal life, the universalism of the command can still stand even if current circumstances render it impossible, impractical, or even unethical.

But there's always that nagging voice in the back of your mind, telling you that you're still just trying to justify yourself.

Adlai Stevenson vs. Alma, Son of Alma?

This month-old post got me thinking about the role of diplomacy in missionary work. As Natalie points out, we often see ourselves, when engaged in missionary work, as representatives of the church. This is natural enough. We’re putting ourselves out there to tell people what we believe, so they would assume that we’d be qualified to talk about it. We are necessarily placed in the role of representatives.

We even call ourselves representatives. How many times did I tell people in Phoenix “somos representantes de La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días”? We tell our missionaries that they are representatives not just of the church, but of Jesus Christ himself. That’s huge.

But as representatives, we often cast ourselves as diplomats. When someone asks us about the church and its doctrines, we want to give an appealing, diplomatic answer; we try to reveal as little as possible of what might be problematic or difficult to understand (milk before meat, after all). And to the extent that we do reveal any such thing, we turn apologists to give some very reasonable sounding explanation (anyone ever heard the tannic acid Word of Wisdom apologia?).

One problem that arises is that each diplomatic attempt to produce the “official position” results in a different official position. Recently, I visited a couple with the missionaries who had a lot of questions about Mormon doctrine and beliefs. They had also gotten a lot of answers that seemed official from the missionaries and from another couple in the ward. I thought many of these answers were right, I thought many of them were flat out wrong, and I thought many were technically correct statements of what many Mormons believe, but were misstatements of what Mormon doctrine actually says.

Diplomatic answers are probably appropriate if you're being interviewed by Larry King or Mike Wallace. But in a missionary setting, it can cause problems. A big part of the art of diplomacy is the art of negotiation, which is to a large extent the art of concealing information and strategy while pretending to reveal it. It’s not about communicating truth, but about getting the other side to do what you want. The diplomat-negotiator always wants to maintain control over the situation.

I suspect that to the extent that we let the rhetorical posture of diplomacy creep into missionary work, we undermine ourselves and ignore our mission to “proclaim the gospel.” That call requires us to do just the opposite of what a seasoned negotiator would do: to communicate the truth as precisely as we can, seeking understanding and leaving the decision in the hands of the other party.

So I see at least four problems with the diplomat-negotiator approach to missionary work: 1) The attempt to create a well-reasoned answer creates unauthorized dogma. 2) Diplomacy conceals the truth, and to the extent that it does, it is not fully honest. 3) Diplomacy tries to exercise control or influence over the other party, and in doing so, its goal is not understanding, but compliance. 4) Because the goal is compliance, rather than understanding, diplomacy relies on superficial rational explanations to explain away and dismiss doubts rather than honest discussion to resolve them.

I think we can represent the church and the Savior without taking on the role of the diplomat-negotiator. But not it if we insist on having a rational answer for every question---a line that plays, a well-reasoned response that we can utter, smooth as oil, and then smile into the camera from under a well-combed coif. The kind of representation that invites the spirit comes not from the well-prepared answers that we repeat, but from the sincere saints that we actually are. The true representative does not have to repeat the official party line; he is himself a representation of his Master. The force of our testimony comes not from our well-composed diplomatic responses, but is, as Paul says, “written in the fleshy tables of the heart."

While I visited with the couple I mentioned, I felt myself falling into the posture of the diplomat. But after answering a few questions beginning with “the church’s official position is” or “most Mormons read that to mean” or something like that, I felt a bit frustrated. I stopped attempting to present myself as a diplomat on behalf of “most Mormons.”

Instead I told them that in Mormonism there are no creeds. While there is plenty that a Mormon must do, there is, in comparison with creedal Christianity, very little that you must believe to be a Mormon. It requires a belief in God, in the Atonement of Christ (i.e. Grace), acceptance of the Book of Mormon and the other revelations as scripture, and a willingness to sustain church leadership.

I told them that the lack of creedal definitions places significant responsibility on the individual, and that this is why the Gift of the Holy Ghost is so important to us. I said that some Mormons, just like human beings in any religion, are uncomfortable with the responsibility and risk that come with this freedom of thought and belief, and so they try to define the doctrines, pin them down, parse them, taxonomize them and codify them. Some even want to regulate and enforce them. But the reality is that from the moment Joseph Smith experienced his first vision, creeds were declared an abomination. God wants his people to come to him for answers. He wants us free.

Having explained this, I told them my own personal thoughts on the questions they asked, but told them also that my opinions were no more valid than any other member of the church, and that in most cases, they would have to decide for themselves how to interpret the doctrines of the church. I told them that if they would seek the spirit, they would find the right answers.

It felt so good to not be locked into a sales pitch.