MORMON  POLYGAMY,  A  SYmBIOTIC  DEBACKLE

            Symbiosis means a mutual exchange; I’ll slap your back if you’ll slap mine.

            Dr. Robert Anderson, a psychiatrist, in his excellent book, Inside the Mind of Joseph Smith, diagnosed the relationship between Joseph and his followers by discerning what went on in Joseph’s mind:  “I will be what you want me to be.  If you want me to be a prophet, I will be a prophet.”

            Joseph gave his people a new identity that built esteem, gave them meaning, and made them a “peculiar” people.  Joseph acted as the people’s conduit to God – receiving timely revelations that at times tended to serve the people, and other times served him.  In any event, the people wanted a prophet, someone to interpret the will of God; and Joseph needed the people to support him and feed his ego.  They needed each other.  It was an unwritten mutual agreement, in other words, a symbiotic relationship.

            A religion is an organization where a concerted group of people worship a Supernatural Being or Entity in exchange for His blessings and His hoped-for intervention in behalf of their affairs.  If the people follow His edicts and adore Him and his prophet, as in the case of Mormonism, He will reward the people with an exaltation much richer and more pleasurable than the salvation of non believers.

            The relationship between God and His believers is an abstract, recondite, cognitive affair because the faithful believers never really make material contact with God – all the devotee knows about God is what someone else wrote or told him. That is where the middleman comes into play.  His role is to present God in a rhythmic, poetic, healing, and repetitive way so that it might stimulate man’s propensity towards spirituality, inducing that warm, comforting feeling and an occasional epiphany.  This middleman is thought to have authority which the people are expected to trust, respect and honor.  The middleman’s propaganda is usually designed to impress upon the believer that the middleman or his priesthood is the one and only conduit to God, and he, the middleman, controls the salvation and resurrection of the people.  In the case of Mormon fundamentalism, the middleman becomes a surrogate god.

            Although the people may be deserving of blessings directly from God such as good health, healings and inspiration concerning personal and family matters, as it pertains to the individual’s exaltation, salvation and resurrection, he is dependent upon the middleman.     There is a presumption that the middleman – prophet, pope, priest, oracle, pastor, shaman, witch doctor, sorcerer, imposter, revelator or whatever – is set apart to save the souls of the people.  However, if the people are going to receive God’s blessings and have their souls exalted, they are expected to do as God stipulates – which is communicated via the middleman. 

            The symbiotic relationship is often instituted in the form of a church where the rules of worship are “engraved in stone” – (a figure of speech).  The rules, such as the Ten Commandments, or Section 132, are non negotiable and immutable unless amended or rescinded by believable revelation.  The relationship between the prophet and people is a reward and punishment agreement predicted upon belief because there is no way to rationally confirm the existence of God.  In other words, because God is ineffable, the symbiotic relationship occurs between the middleman and the people.  If you please Joseph Smith, Warren Jeffs or J. LaMoine Jensen, your exaltation is more assured.

            If the symbiotic relationship is well balanced the church grows exponentially and everyone benefits.  However, as in the case of Mormon fundamentalism, the affair gradually becomes lopsided.  Instead of the middleman serving the people, the people are manipulated into serving the middleman or surrogate god.

            There has been a decade of corruption in AUB.  The evidence is as follows:  (1) The cover-up of alleged sexual deviates among the ruling high priest apostles.  (2) The use of tithing money for building projects that enrich the elite – the elite being certain priesthood leaders and their sycophant inner circle.  (3) The demonizing of dissidents who speak out against corruption.  And of course (4) the theft of 1.5 million from Virginia Hill. 

            There is nothing democratic about a religious group where all the authority and power resides with one man and an oligarchy.  When corruption penetrates leadership, it also penetrates the invisible, ineffable, immutable god of the leadership for He, their God, takes on a persona congruent with the middleman.  The God and the middleman reinforce each other.  This was made evident when Owen Allred asked the Lord what they, AUB, should do with Virginia Hill’s money.  The apparent answer was:  “Don’t give it back, and don’t tell anybody….”  This unscrupulous answer permitted the AUB leadership and its inner circle of roguish disciples to engage in a “pattern of unlawful activity. The AUB God became an accessory before the fact.

            What can we say about the honest AUB adherents – the members who would never do what their leaders did?  The actions of AUB leaders were unquestionably dishonest and shameful.  The facts are documented in Hill vs. AUB and the subsequent Utah Supreme Court Ruling.  Why then haven’t the members spoken out or demanded that their leaders repent and make restitution?  Is it because they lack the power, or lack the will?  Or is it because the leaders have convinced the people that Virginia Hill and her team of lawyers and investigators are being driven by the Devil? 

            If the honest members of AUB really objected to the criminal behavior of their leaders what could they do?  They could threaten to apostatize, refuse to pay tithing, and the women could refuse to give the men sex. 

            So what stops the laity from cleaning up the corruption in the AUB priesthood?  Let’s list some possible reasons:  (1) The faithful have been programmed to believe the AUB priesthood (right or wrong) is infallible and holds the keys to their exaltation.  (2) To accept the facts that their leaders are corrupt is tantamount to the realization that their leaders and the God they worship are frauds.  If the priesthood and God are imposters then that means the member’s investment -- time, talent, money and adoration – was for naught. Rather than start over, they seek to save their investment by making up excuses for their leader’s criminal behavior.

            Only a tiny, tiny … less than 1% of the AUB faithful had the temerity to rebel over the Virginia Hill scandal.  In the mean time how do we explain the lack of membership outrage?

            There are individuals that will tolerate a doctrine that dictates he should serve his master. (Mormon fundamentalism) There are individuals who will also tolerate his master exploiting a third person. (AU  It is not until either he or someone very close to him is exploited that the individual is more likely to rebel. 

            An axiom:  There are religious devotees who like some conservatives, liberals and atheists that think their position and argument is so correct and solid that there couldn’t possibly be an opposing view worth considering.  Author, anonymous.