As I said last entry, I watched Sons of Provo recently. It is a mockumentary surrounding an LDS “boy band”.

Oh. My. Gosh. Though fictional boy band, yet real for the sales of an album accompanying the film - I am all over this for how brilliantly stupid the music is. Besides that, I was really amazed and moved that, per the credits, these actors wrote and recorded the fake boy-band music which is in the film! More than this - and let me first disclaim that I am easily moved - the final song, which it would seem Kirby Hayborne wrote, so perfectly addressed the whole arc of the story of coming out of lunacy and shame, and was performed on the stage of my old High School, and was so beautiful, it made me weep!

To sing “Nourish and strengthen our bodies and give them the good that they need” is a stroke of genius as far as farce goes. I listen to this phrase among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (”LDS”) so often that it may as well be encased, ensconced, and maybe even ensconed doctrine. But it ain’t doctrinal. Can you site a scripture that encourages using this phrase? Nope. Is food cursed before we “bless it” to eat it? Not from anything any prophet said that I heard. Does it actually become more nutritive by this prayer? Not a topic of existing LDS doctrine. I have my strange speculations about mind affecting matter, but wouldn’t the same effect come by what the real point should be - which is to just thank God for the food? That’s all I can ever do in prayers with other LDS folks - anything else makes me squirm. But again as far as LDS culture goes, to “bless” food may as well have been commanded somewhere and some time. Thanking God for food is good, “blessing” it is strange and not based on any scripture.

The film mocks the tendency among many LDS to impose and transmute doctrinal sensibilities into secular areas of life, such as in the boy band’s rules of conduct which are a tight simile of the LDS Articles of Faith. This film is loaded with stuff like this. I’ll confess not being vastly socially cultured so that I don’t know how much of it is truth vs. farce - but that the question can even seriously exist is part of why it’s funny. It makes LDS audiences take a hard look at ourselves and we see that we are fools.

Which, sadly, is exactly why this and the other LDS mockumentary The Work and The Story did not fly as high as I would hope. I don’t know whether it released in theaters but I know that I find no sales stats on it where other LDS films are listed. I love these mockumentaries.

I think that LDS folks can’t stand making fun of themselves because truly we have so many silly or worse traditions among us, and it simply hurts to see them, and most of us I suspect rather than face them with humor would prefer to bury them or deny the fallacy of the traditions.

I recall a quote attributed to Brigham Young, and heaven help me to find it but I trust it’s true (unless it’s another LDS invention held for doctrine though it isn’t - ha!), effectively saying that you can preach anything you want to the Saints, but go against their traditions and they will.. not be pretty towards you. Which, if you think of it, even if it is hearsay and Young didn’t say that, it’s true. Regarding the Book of Mormon and assuming it is true (as I do), a major theme in that book is people holding to false traditions though all earth and hell rage against it (and for that matter the faithful holding to the correct tradition or religions in the face of the same). It begs to break down pride and subject yourself to the will of heaven so that earth and hell will not be brought against you to rage for justice. The book presents the pride of holding to wrong tradition as a universal human problem.

And I’ll dig up worse examples of silly and false traditions among many LDS folks.

There is the tradition that there is a commandment not to see R-rated movies. This is false. Here is Orson Scott Card’s take on it, based firmly in what prophets have and have not said.

I would extend this argument - even more than I recently did with someone.

Card’s reading of the prophets on this one is dead on. Does this make Card a prophet? Only in the sense that he witnesses of truth, which if you look in the Bible Dictionary is actually one meaning of that word. But no, it doesn’t make Card any prophet for the church - it makes him a witness for what the prophets have said. And again, his reading of this is dead on.

Now, as to the semantics and surrounding business of Card’s argument - strictly I see a problem with it where President Benson did bear the phrase “Don’t see R-rated movies”; at the same time it’s plainly in the wider context Card indicates. Also of note is that no other prophet has ever repeated this “commandment”, and prophets always repeat commandments many times - because we need reminding. And no one could argue that prophets are not repeating this “commandment” because the Saints are following it. It’s a letter of the law vs. spirit of the law debate. On the spirit side of it, are LDS folks asked whether we see R-rated movies in the temple recommend interview? Nope. Does God expect us to exercise our individual judgement as to what will help us vs. not? Yep, though not outside counsel with Him individually where it’s important. But does God really want to council us over the movie rating system of Hollywood, or other maniacally fluctuating standards of men? The movie rating system is drastically inconsistent and hasn’t even been applied consistently where it is self-consistent - if we are to follow it, we are to adhere to the inconsitent counsels of men and abdicate our individual judgement to an eternally fluctuating sea of volatile, fickle, perterbed, relativist judgements of men.

What we are to do is restrain our entertainments to that which is wholesome by judging for ourselves whether any entertainment bears out the virtues of the gospel or reviles against them.

This same pharisaical spirit Card identified which takes things for doctrine which are not disgraces the relations many LDS folks have with local, state, and federal politics. Someone I know has asserted die-hard and absolutely that no faithful Mormon can reasonably affiliate with or call themselves Democrats. I countered that this assertion goes absolutely contrary to what church leaders repeatedly and painstakingly say on the matter: that the LDS church makes no doctrinal or official endorsements of political parties or individuals. THE END OF ARGUMENT. But despite that, this person went on to speculate that even openly avowed Democratic church leaders in our history probably voted Republican in secret when it came to pulling that curtain in front of the voting booth. That is simply nuts. It would make these church leaders liars besides. The same argument as to the no r-rated movies “commandment” applies here; just as we cannot safely subjugate all judgements to one rating standard of men, so also we cannot subjugate all judgements and equity in all cases of spirit and law to any one political party entire. To swear total fealty to the earthly and violable standards and politics of men is danger. Are we really to project all of our spiritual and godly expectation on our politicians? Nephi’s answer: “..cursed is he that putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm.” There’s a measure for divine trust and investiture wherever we can find it, but not a totality: no man or party of men outside God’s authority (read: politicians) can rise to all of God’s standards. Who among these Earthly Sovereignties have the Power and the Keys to set us Free? (from a sketch of a song I wrote) While our own Twelfth Article of Faith makes it clear that the Saints are subject to political loyalty, if there were no division of church and state, this article would say so. On earth, we are subjects of states, federations, and kingdoms. When the Christ comes, He will subject all. Until then, the earthly kingdoms have the power and subjugation of citizens, and no absolute or centralized power can be doctrinally said to necessarily have right of total rule. Do not expect your state to be your church. You will be endlessly dissapointed.

Another matter: the sometimes LDS tradition that there is a “preisthood uniform” - in other words that a priesthood bearer must dress in a white T-shirt and tie to administer in the Preisthood. The prophets have openly rebuked this idea while maintaining that it is important to associate our reverence with what culturally is regarded in higher or more formal order, if possible. It isn’t always, and cultural suppositions on the matter vary world-wide. Nonetheless LDS folks persist in this preposterous notion of a secular “preisthood uniform”. There isn’t one.

And now I am so sick of arguing against vile, unscriptural, unspiritual traditions I think I may throw up if I write one more word.