A friend who attended my now defunct writing class has, for the last 4 years, been researching the origins of the Mormon church & its interweaving place in American history. I am not Mormon, nor religious (though have a fascination for ‘tradition’, however one may interpret tradition), but I have to say the history is astoundingly fascinating.

My friend, born UK, moved to the US for college/university, fell in love with a mormon girl but something didn’t sit right, came out as gay, became Mormon (hiding his sexuality), became a missionary, lost faith entirely when confronting fundemental issues on sexuality, moved back to Cardiff, entirely lost faith but respected the principles of the church, & picked up writing/researching the history again. Over the years he flirted with the church, but always backed off because of its unilateral stance on homosexuality (& drinking, & smoking & various other vices), until about a year & a half ago he hooked up with ‘the girl’ via the interweb. Within a year they’d rekindled, met up, & married. He was in his mid 40s then & (despite many serious gay relationships & playing as one does in that field) back in the Mormon fold – but on his terms. The book was at first draft stage & it is a brilliant read. Full of treachery, guns, massacres, romance, politics (HUGE part of the American & Mormon parallel trajectory), prayers, back-stabbing, fractions, etc etc etc.

True, the Mormon history began with one man representing a ‘lost text’ spoken to him by God over the period of time (cynics, sharpen thy claws). He was revered in some quarters as an incarnation of God, a representation of Christ on earth, etc. But, the Mormon church we have today is an entirely different prospect to the one that set out. &, despite the idolisation, the Mormon faith was only always about values & morals. OK, some of them values are a little draconian (no coffee, booze, smokes, same sex loving, etc) but essentially (albeit over a period of famine, drought, war, etc) it also developed an economical communal stability which continues to this day. It taught self sufficiency AND collective responsibility/liability that pre-dated Marxism & Communism (which to our cynical eyes today either looks & smells of a cult sucking money from the low waged or a capatalist’s dream come true); it was a great influence on how the common law structure in the US works today, especially the court procedure & the right to bear witness & trial by jury, AND helped properly mould & establish the democratic voting procedure in favour of the citizen rather than the politician. There are countless other examples of how the Mormon church became fundemental to the political structure of the USA, & by proxy the American public.

Sure, there were monumental fuck ups, there was corruption, but look at any movement ‘for the people’ & you’ll find just the same.

There’s a huge myth structure built around Mormonism (of course, justified some would say, based on the fact the ‘religion’ is itself built on a myth developed & hawked by a con man) & a lot of people don’t ever see past the multi-wife/child abuse cult nonsense that dogs them at every turn (truth is, that whole thing revolves around one family head – who was excommunicated from the official faith years ago on the basis of his shenanigans – & what he did under his break off brand of Mormonism).

I’m not in any way defending the church here or advertising it, just pointing out that it has more basis in reality & living than Scientology – that is an organisation determined to remain aloof & secular, elitist & dangerously threatening to investigation. These guys are protecting their practices, not their people’s ‘faith’; whereas Mormonism, like the Catholic* church for example, has dodgy elements & issues with origin etc so protects its people’s faith rather than its day to day activities.

My writer friend is Mormon still smokes & drinks & has written a detailed, unsympathetic historical account of the influence of The Book of Mormon on the very workings of the USA today. He knows there are inaccuracies in the origins, in the overall structure, but he (like millions of Christians, Muslims, Catholics, etc) ignores them in favor of the path he wishes to take. I respect that & don’t question his reasons, even the contradictory ones that are glaring & crippling.

It’s not a church I would be interested in being a part of (nor any, for that matter), but I understand the draw of a faith that actively communicates community harmony (e.g. the church in Cardiff provides every Mormon family with a ‘disaster’ kit – consisting of everything they would need in a flood or a power shortage or anything that would leave them cut off for a prolonged period of time; this is not to say this is an apocalypse kit, far from it – it’s community responsibility where they make sure their members are able to operate & assist others in the wider populace when a disaster strikes. How do I know this? I designed the kits about 3 years ago.). It’s not elitist or pretentious or portentous (at least I don’t see any example or evidence of) & welcomes all comers – another friend of mine told me she joined the church years ago & had some of the happiest times of her life with it. She only left because she had an affair with one of the priests & that was seriously frowned upon (as it is, I would say, in any modern Church). A work colleague is married into a Mormon family (he is agnostic, she is lapse Mormon) but his family side are Baptist – they all get on like a house on fire. I’m sure that there are incidents, like in any church, or prejudice, ignorance, bigotry, etc. but I’m old enough these days to understand that informs most of everything with a social bent.

S’anyway, his book (Guns, Prophets & Prayers) is being hawked to academic publishers at the moment &, with any luck, should see the light of day in about a year. Seriously, seriously, well worth the read – it’s not a preachy book, it doesn’t justify the religion, it reports & analyses & questions. Get it if you ever see it, if only because it reads like a bodice ripper of a thing, what with all the ‘action’ that took place in the formative 100years from the church’s inception.

*of course, the Catholic church ar a little in denial about the extent of the child abuse in its ranks – this is a tad different to the Mormon church where they have taken active steps to hound out the nasties in their ranks. Unfortunately, those nasties go off & create a new brand of Mormonism & then the original church gets tarred with their heavy brush.

I mean, Christianity once had a ritual which involved smearing the freshly-drawn blood of a goat above the door of a church before you entered, and that’s something you don’t see so much of nowadays.

A small cult develops around one individual and his opinions, the members of that cult are originally ridiculed or persecuted, but eventually have enough strength in numbers to gather momentum and achieve some sort of legitimacy.

What’s interesting to consider is how vastly different the worlds of say Christianity, Islam, Hebrewism etc. are today from their origins, and how much the original teachings have been corrupted over the centuries.

If the message of peace and goodwill that the Abrahmic faiths were built upon has been eroded to the degree that we see on the news every day nowadays, imagine what the message of Scientology with all its UFOs and aliens and people living in volcanoes will be in a thousand years!

Everyone knows when Scientology was invented. How can we possibly embrace that kind of stuff as genuine religion?

Actually, fuck that, maybe I am on the wrong tack with all this music nonsense. Song, by Toad is a religion from this day forth. The Revelations of Mr. Toad will be published shortly and I bet our sacrament is more fun that those other fuckers too.

It’s the fact that this “religion” was invented, born fully-formed, within living memory! I mean – seriously – who’s kidding who here?!

Love this song, by the way..