Kate’s Blog

Tom here at my wedding, sporting a sheriff’s badge I gave him in middle school

The gift giver I mentioned in my last post is a friend, Tom, I’ve had since he called me a “poser” in middle school for wearing Simple shoes. The following is his response to my last post:

“I remember the person who gave you those books. As I recall, he was a terribly handsome young man with exquisite taste and a generous nature. Handsome, too.

First off, I think it is a stretch to call “Mormon America” an unequivocally “anti-Mormon” book. That designation would better fall to works of the “No Man Knows My History”-variety. “Mormon America” is biased only if you think that topics like the Mountain Meadows Massacre, polygamy, the September Six and the financial secrecy of the Church are utterly unworthy of regard when painting a picture of the faith and its adherents. Certain subjects deserve to be dealt with more than just parenthetically, and while I agree that the MMM and polygamy are mostly irrelevant to discussions of modern Mormonism, the other two aren’t, especially when one considers the fact that a prominent Mormon is vying for the Republican presidential nomination.

Also, as an atheist, I think it would be behoovey of me to point out that “my people” are even more misunderstood and mistrusted than “your people.” I couldn’t find the numbers in the poll you linked to, but I’d guarantee that an openly atheistic candidate would have even greater difficulty getting elected than a Mormon. And I speak for more than just atheists when I say that the crimes and excesses of the Bush Administration, executed under the banner of a perversely distorted brand of “Christianity,” have soured me on any candidate who claims to receive divine inspiration, or worse, claims a divine mandate to lead the nation. I don’t care at all how tight Candidate X thinks he is with Jesus. I do care whether Candidate X can speak in complete sentences and not make me embarassed to be an American. Any dialogue we’re going to have about Mormonism, or about a Mormon presidential candidate, is going to include as a corollary a discussion about things like ideological rigidity and the consequences of unorthodoxy (which is relevant more now
than ever), just as a conversation about atheism would be incomplete without a discussion of Josef Stalin and the Marquis de Sade.

Do you remember what you got me for my birthday? Cookies. I got you, well, junk (except for Bertrand Russell. That book is actually very, very good, and more of a defense of atheism than a deconstruction of Christianity), and you got me cookies. You see? It’s a microcosmic summation of the nature of our friendship, and of all my encounters with Mormons. I remember visiting you at BYU, standing outside your house with a cigarette in my hand, daring students and passersby with my steely glare to attempt to convert me, and what do I get? Polite greetings and friendly smiles, i.e., more cookies. I give you nothing, and YOU KEEP GIVING ME COOKIES! I really can say with complete honesty that Mormons are some of the smartest, friendliest, wittiest, most generous and hard-working people I’ve ever met. I read books like “Mormon America” because while I may not believe the Scripture, I’m genuinely curious about the Church, and hope you don’t see that as patronizing.

With love,

Tomas”

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 9th, 2007 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Friends, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.