8/22/24

Thursday, August 22, 2024 

1953 Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi returns to Tehran

1964 Fannie Lou Hamer speaks at the Democratic National Convention about her terrifying experiences with voter registration as a Black woman in Mississippi

In bed at 9:40, awake at 2:30, and up and about at 3 a.m.  Lilly sleeping soundly next to her mattress, got up and moved to living room after I came into tv room.  I let Lilly out at 3:35 as the train was passing through Bayside, blowing its horn.  I wonder what it is hauling, whether its cargo is hazardous, thinking of derailings in other communities.  Mostly I wonder why it blows its warning horn at this hour of the morning in this bedroom community.  I also wonder about the crew on the train, when they boarded, where they boarded, how they handle the logistics of their work schedules over distances. . . I let Lilly out again around 5:30 and nodded off at some point till 7:10. 

Prednisone, day 102, 10 mg., day 9./28  I took the 10 mg. at 4:15 a.m.  followed by a bowl of All Bran with berries and my morning meds and 650 mg. of Tylenol at 7:15 a.m.

Back to McKay Coppins and America's Religion.   In Coppins' article in The Atlantic, he writes of 14 years old Joseph Smith's "first vision" in which, he asserted, God apppeared to him, in 1820, on the family farm in Palmyra, NY, along with Jesus, and said to Joseph "This is my Beloved Son.  Hear Him."

The power of his story was in its implausibility. No reasonable person would accept such an outlandish claim on its face—to believe it required faith, a willingness to follow young Joseph’s example. This was how our teacher framed the story, as much object lesson as historical event. Don’t believe in this because your parents do, we were told. Go ask God for yourself.  (Coppins' italics.) . . .

My own testimony didn’t come in a blaze of revelation, but in living the faith day to day. The church was where I felt most like myself. The green hymnals we sang from on Sundays, the sacramental Wonder Bread we passed down the pews, the corny youth dances in the sweaty church gym where we’d jump around to DJ Kool before closing with a prayer—these were more than just quirks of my parents’ religion. They were emblems of an identity, one I could never fully reveal to my non-Mormon friends.

But "living the faith day to day" is another way of saying 'being indoctrinated', literally having the doctrines infused in you.  When you are "living the faith day to day" from your childhood, led by your parents, aren't you doing precisely what Coppins' teacher warned against, i.e., believing because your parents believe?  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.: 

"We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them; he will still feel as the famous woman did about ghosts, Je n'y crois pas, mais je les crains,—"I don't believe in them, but I am afraid of them, nevertheless".

Coppins' description of the early history of the Mormons and its leader Joseph Smith reads like a description of what most of us would call a "cult" led by a manipulative though charismatic, narcissistic, megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur, i.e., that he is a Prophet to whom and through whom God speaks to the world.  In other words, a crackpot.  How does it come to be believed as representing great Truths?

It’s hard to overstate just how deeply this history is woven into modern Mormon life. As little kids, we sing songs about pioneer children who “walked and walked and walked and walked”; when we get older, we read about pioneers burying their children in shallow graves on the brutal westward trek. The stories I grew up hearing in church—about Missouri and martyrdom and Martin Van Buren—were often sanitized for devotional effect. But the scars they’ve left on the Mormon psyche are real.

Isn't this the process that Oliver Wendell Holmes described?  Tattooing, indoctrination, brainwashing?  Isn't this the same process that Kitty and I went through with Catholicism and most people go through with the 'Faith of our Fathers', tattooed in our cradles?

Faith of our fathers, living still,

In spite of dungeon, fire, and sword;

Oh, how our hearts beat high with joy

Whene’er we hear that glorious Word! 

Refrain:

Faith of our fathers, holy faith!

We will be true to thee till death.

Faith of our fathers, we will strive

To win all nations unto thee;

And through the truth that comes from God,

We all shall then be truly free.

Through the truth that comes from God - just as Coppins' Mormon teacher said, not from your parents, but from God! Ir seems God makes Himself known to some, and not to others.

Anniversaries thoughts.  First, the Iranians haven't forgot who overthrew their government and reinstalled the tyrannical Shah to rule over them and to benefit BP and other Western oil companies.

Second, at the DNC 60 years ago, when I was 23, the Democrats refused to seat Hamer's Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party but seated the segregationist Dixiecrats.  All was changed with the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts which turned the South solidly Republican and still racist.