The Mormons

Dad woke me up Sunday morning with his phone call, as he has done now for the past several weeks, to discuss what church we should go to. He suggested the Mormons and I concurred, although not without some trepidation. I wasn't sure what to expect and it seemed that if the Bible Baptists could have an organized system of nearly assaultive tactics for the visitor, then I could only imagine what the notoriously conversion oriented Mormons might have in store for us.

A little bit of research and I discovered that there are 5 'wards' in Fairbanks. Each of the two major churches has two wards with separate times for worship, and there is a fifth ward entitled 'singles', as well as other wards in outlying communities. Every community, now matter how small has its own ward. North Pole, Delta, Salcha, etc. We agreed to attend the 11:00 AM services of one of the two wards serviced by the Mormon temple downtown on Cowles near the old Shoppers Forum.

Before I knew it or was even really awake, we were parked outside. As has become standard for us, we waited a bit before entering. We didn't want to enter too early and usually prefer to enter only minutes before things get started. However, on this day, Dad said it would be interesting to enter and watch folks flow in so in we went a few minutes earlier than our usual aim. It was about ten minutes before things got started. For me, it helped to face the uncertainty, rather than sit and let it build. Ahead of us a heavy lady with tattoos on her arms and legs, and sort of a dark nightclub dress, lots of makeup, lots of cleavage showing, walked with her young daughter. My dad made a comment about the tattoos showing for church and how that was kind

of a new thing probably.

I should mention that my dad grew up a member of, and became an ordained minister in an unusual branch of the Mormon church, called the *Reorganized* Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints. This splinter sect was founded by Joseph Smith's wife and her followers when they decided not to go along with Smith's revelation regarding polygamy. Smith's wife didn't cotton to him taking a fourteen year old girl as his additional wife if I remember correctly. This split happened while the church followers were in Nauvoo Illinois, before Smith was killed and the remaining followers were run out of town and eventually emigrated to Utah.

Other folks walking in sported white shirts and ties for the men, most or nearly all of the women wore long skirts. It reminded me of the services from last Sunday and thought of the nineteenth century aspects of that conservative presence.

The first thing that struck me was that the building is quite small. I imagined something more grand or more imposing. The hallways are narrow and tight and lead directly to a fairly small worship space. The space is smaller than the Church of Christ space from last week and considerably drearier. Everything is quite dated. I immediately noticed that there was no projector for lyrics or information, no screen, and unusually, lots of permanent seating on the raised altar-like area. Sort of like a 'head table' arrangement, only in elevated rows facing the congregation. It didn't take long before we were noticed by the pastor, he reminded me in appearance quite a bit of George Bush Sr. He came over and welcomed us and asked if we were visiting but was satisfied and welcoming when we said yes, and that we were just local visitors and gave our names. Another fellow came by for a similar sincere greeting before things got going.

At the back of the church, against the back wall, all of the young men on mission sit in chairs all in a row. There were probably eight or ten. The church filled up fairly well, maybe about 70% capacity, perhaps 85 or 90 people took their seats. Four or five men sat facing us from the raised altar seating. I'm not sure who they all were exactly.

Soon the minister got things started with some announcements regarding a gathering at Lost Lake and then some songs. The worst, most boring and banal singing I have heard to date. Pretty much without spirit, and lacking in tempo, energy, or any sort of inspiration. A young woman in a white cardigan and long skirt tried half heartedly to exhort music from the crowd with rhythmic waving of her hand but it was a feeble effort and the crowd invested little in the exercise. The songs were slow and dreary and soulless. I was so bored I read the inside of the hymnal and discovered that these songs were selected four days after the Mormon church was founded when Smith asked his wife to 'make some selections from common hymns that would give glory to god.' I'm not sure whether the failure was hers or simply in execution, but failure was abundant and the result was agony.

I was surprised at how small the service was in terms of attendance. The gathering was smaller than the fringe gathering at the Church of Christ the week before. The crowd was of mixed race but had more women with kids and without spouses than I've seen at the other churches. But the servers were all men. Aside from the girl in the cardigan, those on the raised platform were all men and boys. During one of the lifeless songs, I noticed boys breaking bread into small pieces at the left side of the altar area. More interminable songs. Really there were only two but they went on forever and were painful. A group of boys and one man gathered and delivered the sacrament amongst the pews. First, small torn fragments of whole-wheat wonder bread were offered to all. Very sweet on the palette. Then, the little tray with a hundred little plastic cups, each the size of a thimble, with our dose of water. Water. This water had the hard taste of institutional water. I wouldn't say it was any kind of spring water. More like institutional water fountain water.

It is hard to get excited about a thimble of water. It doesn't have much majestic appeal, or ritualistic power. I thought about how most people attending services in their various offshoot churches don't realize that they're following in the shadows of Catholicism. They're doing a literally watered down version of the Catholic service that was around for 1500 years before the Reformation. Not that the grape juice of the other churches is much better. It is all silly in fact. I think the Friends Church has this much better. Skip all that, eat your donuts, drink your latte and just sit and relax. Or dance and rock out to the upbeat music. That is the upgrade. But I was stuck in Church 1.0 and a watery one at that.

George Bush Sr. began the 'Testimony' portion of the service. The minister or pastor in the Mormon church has a pretty good deal. He didn't have to give a sermon, he mentioned that today was a day of fasting, and that they were focused on family this week and then began his own 'testimony'. Tearfully he expressed his gratefulness for his six children and for Jesus dying on the cross and then opened up the floor for other testimonies. It was 11:25 and he said they would take testimony until five minutes after the hour. I couldn't believe, at first, that he meant what he said, or that I actually had the right time on my watch. But it was true. The testimonies began. The tension between testifiers would grow and grow in the silence as we all waited for someone to leave their seat and begin the walk toward the podium.

I must interrupt myself at this point to discuss the podium for I believe it was the best and only evidence of God I saw this day. Whenever a parishioner would walk towards it, it would magically raise or lower with a dull whirring noise to the appropriate height. I'm not sure who or what was controlling this, but I am pretty sure it was the Heavenly Father. For the otherwise austere worship environment, this magic podium struck me as comical as it would try to anticipate the height of speakers as they ascended the altar. Sometimes finishing with a final pulse or two to get the height just right.

Back to the testifiers - there was a relief as they approached, but the tension would begin again as they invariably launched into banalities and trivialities with great emotion and usually pretty poor speaking talent.

I think their emotional outbursts, these releases, must somehow come from the stresses involved in maintaining dualities of existence. Being rooted in both the material objective world, and at the same time trying to interpret things via the supernatural. Whatever the source of the energy, there was a consistent tearful release by the testifiers. The cliché about people occasionally needing a 'good cry' comes to mind. Something drives them to walk alone to the front of the class and dump their heart in a choking sobbing confession. One of the main threads was regarding things they 'knew' to be true.

They testified that the Gospel was true, that the Book of Mormon was true, and that it was true that Jesus Christ died for our sins. They testified to these main points with some variation in inclusion or omission, but basically, I got the point. It was interminable. Some souls added little personal details that they thought were somehow necessary, or offered in evidence of the other basic testimony. It seemed odd to me that they repeatedly all testified to these same things being true. It seems there is a lot of insecurity in this matter.

One heavier elder lady testified that the Gospel was true and that she was thankful for her sons who helped her with wallpapering or spackling or something, she didn't quite know what they were doing but it was helping her walls to look better and she was thankful for the help and how she couldn't do it herself because her wrist hurt and so she slept with the heating pad on it and in the morning it felt much better and it is just so amazing how Jesus Christ works. She was thankful. There was an incoherent Native guy. One of the young male missionaries gave perhaps the best testimony when he compared the Book of Mormon to rotisserie chicken and that you had to really get in there and feast on the Book of Mormon as it was full of such good and enriching content.

Finally, after about a year, the testimonies ended and we had another excruciatingly slow and spiritless song and we were dismissed. I wanted to invite these folks to step into the Friends Church. I can't help but imagine that they'd get more out of it, and have a lot more fun in the process. Or even the Church of Christ - with a full and lively atmosphere. I am contemplating talking to my dad about visiting the other main Mormon church, just to see if this was some sort of anomaly. For the famous Mormon Church, I was really surprised at its simplicity and lack of spiritual or emotional sophistication. We all get what we want out of the things we do, and for some, tradition undoubtedly plays a huge role.

As we walked out into the parking lot, my dad and I laughed at the rotisserie chicken analogy and he said that no-one has ever feasted on the Book of Mormon, it being so boring and bizarre with various fictional tribes of Israel in the new world fighting other fictional peoples and so on. We had a good laugh and it helped us to dispel the tension of our morning's adventure with the Mormons.