Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Restoration: in Convenient YouTube Format!

Last year when I went to San Diego, I saw this flick at the Mormon Battalion museum. Fortunately, now you don't have to go to a Mormon-affiliated location to catch it, because some kind soul has uploaded the videos to YouTube. The picture is a little squishy, but you get the general idea.

I'll post my thoughts on the movie in a separate post. For now, enjoy:















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Koran update

Brief update to my previous entry on the Koran being available for free (if you live in Houston and it showed up on your doorstep) or for the cost of shipping (less than $5) from the Book of Signs Foundation:

I stopped by Half Price Books last week over lunch, and took a gander in the Religion section. They had a Book of Signs-issued Koran for sale - for $7.50!

I rarely fault Half Price Books' pricing scheme, but when you sell the Book of Mormon (the Mormons don't charge you, and they'll cover the shipping costs or have missionaries bring it by directly), the Koran, or the King James Version of the Bible (again, free thanks to the Mormons or if you swipe a copy from the Gideons from a hotel room) at a cost well above where it is available elsewhere, you've got a problem.

Then again, I suppose holy books from active, proselytizing religions are much more the exception than the rule, because it's to their benefit to get their book in your hands as quickly as possible. On the other hand, I think I would have a relatively harder time getting hold of a copy of the Guru Granth Sahib (Sikh holy book).

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Where's my free Koran?

I read the following story on the Fox News website a couple of weeks ago: 'Residents Angered by Group's Distribution of Korans'. The gist is that some group called the Book of Signs Foundation left free Korans in plastic bags on the door knobs of about 30,000 households in Houston.

First, let me tell you what makes me angry. It's when I find worthless crap hanging on my door knob, or worse, taped to my door. Cards for painters (ironic, since their card will peel paint off my door), landscapers, maid services, coupons, restaurant menus, and so on. Given all that crap, I think it would be a nice change of pace to come home to find some religion's holy book, no matter what I thought about them.

These folks in Houston were primarily angry because they felt they were being proselytized. I feel like this is the best kind of proselytizing. Why? You never have to see someone. The worse part about door-to-door missionary work is talking to people. This method is genius! You get in a hard day of proselytizing, cover a lot of ground, and can listen to your iPod while doing it. At least that's my idea of missionary work.

So I figured if this Book of Signs Foundation was handing out free Korans, why not give one to me? I went to their web site to see how this would work. Good news: they're giving out free Korans. They'll even send you one. If you cover the $4.95 shipping charges. So, it's free-ish.

Maybe I should call and ask for a free one. I mean, if they can give 30,000 people in Houston free Korans, surely they can send one to a guy who'd appreciate it.

Where's my free Koran, Book of Signs Foundation?

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Guess who's going to the Twin Falls Temple open house?

Not Bart, the Man who Must Be Stopped. No, not by a long shot.

I took reader rrp's advice and adopted a nom de guerre for this operation. I also used an associated Mailinator address. (As an aside, this is the first I've come into contact with Mailinator. What a handy tool!)

So, I had to decide what name to use. Then I remembered: I already had a religious nom de guerre... more of a nom de religion. My popin' name: Urban Justice.


That's right. On 8/8/08, Urban Justice is going to bring his own brand of religious awesomeness to the Twin Falls, Idaho temple. He's takin' it to the streets of small-town Idaho.

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Temple conundrum

I have a Mormania!-related conundrum. It's about a temple.

For those that don't know, gentiles (non-Mormons) can't go inside LDS temples. They're too special. Hell, there's Mormons that can't go inside either. You have to pass an interview, get a special card, etc. They make it into a big deal.

However, there is a catch. Once a temple has finished being constructed, it has an "open house" lasting several weeks. Anyone can take a guided tour of the place at that point. Given my interest in all things Mormon, this would be something I'm very much interested in.

I just got notice that the new temple in Twin Falls, Idaho has scheduled its open house dates for July 11 - August 16. Yes, I get an e-mail when this sort of thing happens. Do me the courtesy of not acting surprised. Anyone can go, but you need tickets in advance. Fortunately the church has a handy little system set up where you can pick your time online and print out your tickets.

To be completely honest, it seems like getting to Twin Falls would be more trouble than it's worth. I'd have to fly to Boise, drive two mountainous hours to Twin Falls... a beating. There will be other opportunities in the next year or so for me to take a temple tour if I so desire. Two are currently under construction in the greater Salt Lake City area, and one is being built in Vancouver, BC. Both are places I'd like to go, while Idaho is not currently on my list. So I'm not seriously contemplating going to this.

As I mentioned, however, I have a bit of a conundrum. It seems like having a ticket to a temple open house would be a nice item for a Mormania! scrapbook. I can sign up online, print them out, and then go back later and cancel my reservation. However, this would involve giving them my contact information. Sure, it's just name and e-mail, but then I would be in the system, if you will.

It may surprise you, but so far I have managed to avoid alerting the church authorities of my name, town, e-mail address, etc. Even the e-mail that I get letting me know when open houses are taking place is from a 3rd party "enthusiast" site, not the LDS church. (It's a pretty interesting site, by the way - lots of info about history, architecture, etc.)

So, what to do? Do I acquire a bit of memorabilia, and place myself in jeopardy of being contacted at a future date by missionaries, etc.? You might argue that's going to happen eventually anyway. Or, do I wait until a tour comes up that I might consider going on?

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Pulling back the veil... a little

Reader Ram recently directed me to Wikileaks, the site where stuff gets leaked. I knew it was something special when I saw a story about the Wikimedia Foundation board censoring Wikinews. Now that's hard-hitting.

What Ram thought I would really be interested in is the posting of Book 1 of the Church Handbook of Instructions of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Link to the story (with its own download link) is here.

This book is generally unavailable to church members without the need-to-know (tends to be reserved to bishops, stake presidents, and the like) and is definitely not available to gentiles at large. The Mormons are unleashing some lawyers on Wikileaks, claiming copyright infringement. Wikileaks' answer: you are talking to Wikileaks.

So, what's all the hubbub about? What's in this "secret" book? Let's pull back the veil (at least a little) on the legendary secrecy of the Mormon leadership!

Actually, I've hyped it up way too much. This is 198 pages of boring. Really, it's an administrative handbook. The page on Wikileaks that I linked to lists some interesting passages, but are you terribly surprised that Mormons wouldn't give temple recommends to post-op transsexuals? I'm more surprised that they will, in fact, agree to baptize them. That's more liberal than I thought the LDS church would be.

Here's another scandalous item: if a baby is born in a family where one parent is a member of the church and one isn't, the bishop will obtain verbal permission from both parents before the child is blessed. When the child turns 8, the bishop will visit with the parents to propose that the child be baptized.

Again, it seems to be more polite than anything. Compare that with Catholics - not that I know much, but from what I understand, when you have a Catholic and a non-Catholic who are having kids, the Catholics consider themselves to have dibs on the kids, no questions asked. You baptize it quick, no muss, no fuss.

Try this: 'Members who have mental disabilities... need not be baptized, regardless of their age. They are "saved in the celestial kingdom of heaven"'. Not to rag on the Catholics again, and at the risk of exposing my vast ignorance yet again, but based on the South Park episode where the kids were concerned that Timmy couldn't get into heaven because he couldn't understand Confession... well, I'll leave the comparison to you.

There are interesting bits here and there, but, again, mostly it's administrative stuff. What paperwork to fill out and when, what you should do in a given situation, etc.

Looks like Wikileaks also has some Scientology documents. Now that should be interesting.

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LDS succession - just like clockwork

If you have any interest in religions founded within the last two hundred or so years, I can't recommend Harold Bloom's 'The American Religion' strongly enough. Its primary focus is the Mormon church, but also covers a host of others, most prominently Southern Baptists.

The book was published in 1992, when the president of the Mormon church was Ezra Taft Benson. If you want an idea of the longevity of Mormon leaders, Benson is a good case in point. He was a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture... under Eisenhower. Seriously. He was born in 1899. In 1953, Ike appointed him as his Ag Secretary. It wasn't until 1985 that he was sustained as the President of the Mormon church. He was president until his death in 1994.

As it turns out, that very longevity enables some very accurate predictions to be made about the future leadership of the LDS church. From 'The American Religion':

"Benson is now ninety-three; next in line is Howard W. Hunter, eighty-three, and then Gordon B. Hinckley, eighty. Behind them is the powerful Thomas S. Monson, only sixty-two. When President Monson becomes the Prophet, Seer, and Revelator [Bart's note: this is an official title in the Mormon church, and applies to the members of the First Presidency (the President and his two councilors) along with the Quorum of the Twelve, the next highest ranking group from whose ranks Presidents are inevitably chosen], there may be less reliance upon the Book of Mormon as the royal road into the Mormon religion."

Guess how the succession of Presidents of the Mormon church ended up happening? It was exactly in the order that Bloom laid out. Thomas S. Monson became the president of the LDS church on February 3, 2008. Just like clockwork.

Incidentally, Bloom's main point in this section was that, despite the general irrelevance of the Book of Mormon to the everyday running and teachings of the Mormon church, Benson had embraced it and used it as the focus of missionary activities. Belief that the Book of Mormon is the word of God is #8 in their articles of faith. Bloom speculated that Monson would, during his term as president, reduce his church's emphasis on the Book of Mormon. Whether that will happen, and whether he would replace that focus with an emphasis on the church's other standard works (such as the 'Pearl of Great Price') or simply on their everyday teachings, I'm not sure.

Incidentally, here's an amusing example from Violent Acres of how Mormons don't pick their successors. Hat tip to Mrs. Bart for forwarding this to me.

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