Book Review: The Mormon People

Book Title: The Mormon People

Author: Matthew Bowman

Date: 2012

Publisher: Random House

Length: 328 pages including index and appendices

ISBN: 978-0-679-64490-3

Quote: "Mormons believe in the Bible, though Joseph Smith taught that errors and mistranslations might sometimes compromise its text. They also use three other works of scripture: the Book of Mormon, the record of an ancient American civilization the resurrected Christ visited; the Doctrine and Covenants, a collection of revelations given to Joseph Smith; and the Pearl of Great Price...mostly produced by Joseph Smith."

Matthew Bowman is an editor at Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, which makes this book almost an official history of his church. ("My family...are models of the best Mormonism has to offer.") It's a nicely balanced work, an inside story written for outsiders; Bowman is obviously pro-Mormon but he's not hiding any of the historical facts that keep most Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians from claiming a religious kinship with the "Latter-Day Saints."

Such as, for example, their desire to be singled out as "saints." To be fair, I have heard Protestant teachers tell Sunday (or Sabbath) School classes that this word properly refers to any serious, committed Christian; the epistles of Paul address churches full of confused and sinful believers as "saints." But when Mormons suggest that the word that literally means "holy wo/men" should refer to them as distinct from the rest of us...I confess, friends, I am miffed. Nice people to know, yes. Sincere in their faith and practice, often. All that much better than other Christians? Not hardly!

Anyway, this book contains frank discussions of Mormon theology (still radically different from other Christians'), polygamy (not condoned by the group based in Salt Lake City during the past century, but there are other groups who accept the Book of Mormon as scripture), racism, sexism, special underwear, proxy baptisms, reincarnation, polytheism, "elderhood" for college-age boys (but not their grandmothers), the degree to which the church has tolerated the dissenting views of well-known Mormons, and more.

Anyone interested in studying the beliefs Mitt Romney would bring to the White House definitely needs to read this book.

How is it possible to take the Book of Mormon seriously? Apparently, faith in this long, strange story rests to a considerable extent on the belief that Joseph Smith wouldn't have been able to write it as a novel. This I believe to be a serious error. Although in no way comparable with his contemporary Ellen Harmon White--even as a writer, and nobody has ever called Ellen White a gifted writer--Smith did have a kind of genius. And people willing to claim their stories as novels, revise them, and market them have written stranger conceptual fiction than the Book of Mormon, although, when such books have not been marketed as religious revelations, they've rarely lasted long.

Bowman seems to approve of tendencies within his church toward a belief that homosexual acts are somehow different from other sins denounced in the Bible. Readers are free, as always, to disagree with him. Very few people have ever felt free from a desire to engage in sexual behavior other than monogamy or celibacy; I suspect all those blessed with such freedom have been celibate and have struggled with other spiritual issues. Christianity has taught 99% of humankind that the alternative to active sin requires resisting intense desires that persist throughout at least half of each person's adult life. Disagreement on this point has to do with beliefs about the active sins most Christians will, after all, continue to "fall into" after committing themselves to Christianity. If Bowman has any basis for believing that homosexual desires deserve some special preference over all other sexual desires, which would not be found in the Bible or in medical research, he does not explain that basis in The Mormon People.

What most readers are more interested in knowing would probably be whether Candidate Romney would, if elected, impose his religious beliefs on the nation...in the way "Romneycare" imposed his beliefs on the people of Massachusetts. (Mormons believe in being prepared for emergencies; mandatory medical insurance is Romney's interpretation of this belief.) Unfortunately, that topic is beyond the scope of Bowman's book.

I've read better books about other religious groups. Although Booton Herndon was never a Seventh-Day Adventist, his 1965 study, The Seventh Day, was a delightful read. So was Barbara Grizzuti Harrison's (ultimately unfavorable) Visions of Glory: A History and a Memory of Jehovah's Witnesses. Possibly these titles leap to mind because both of these denominations are sometimes believed to have something to do with the Mormons, and both deny any connection; there are other denomination studies that people would be likely to read for pleasure. The Mormon People is clear and readable, but it's likely to be read entirely for information. But what timely information it contains!

This one is not currently a Book You Can Buy From Me online, because it's new.