Only One, Please.

We had book club the other night. I love book club. We only talk about the book and serious things. We are very intellectual. We never ever talk about poop, our labor and deliveries or the fact that our boobs will never be the same after having children. It’s only politics, writing style and philosophy at our book clubs.

Our book was “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson. Very good book about a man who goes in to Pakistan and later Afghanistan to build schools in poverty stricken villages. It’s amazing what one man can make happen.  We got talking about Islam and how so many things we know or think we know about Muslims and their faith are tainted by the fundamentalists of the religion or what movies tell us. So to most Westerners the Islamic faith is oppressive and war hungry with no freedoms.

One example we talked about was the women wearing the veil. In some cases I am sure that it is misused or taken to the extreme but I think if you were  to ask a lot of Muslim women, they would love it as part of their faith and see it as a protection of sorts.

It got me thinking about the misconceptions there are out there about my religion-The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, better known as The Mormons (which was actually a derogatory nickname given to the church members in the early days by haters because of The Book of Mormon…funny it’s still around). I could write pages of misconceptions and false information that are out there about my church. I ran into almost everything on my mission, some laughable and some just hurtful and mean.

One of them comes from our history, back to the earlier years. Yes, I’m talking about polygamy.

We often get confused with those fundamentalist ‘Mormons’ when it hasn’t been a practice in our religion since 1890. And when it was practiced, it wasn’t about who can get the most pretty young wives. In fact, Mark Twain (not a fan of the church) said,

“Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter. I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here - until I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically "homely" creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I said, "No - the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh censure - and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence." (Roughing It, Sam Clemens, p97)

While I find his statement hilarious, he makes a good point. It wasn’t about sex or power, it was about taking care of our own and increasing the population. All of this and the belief that it was a commandment from God.

Thanks to TV, this misconception is being shared with a wider audience with these guys:

               

Because of misinformation people think this is a part of our religion now. I assure you it is not! As much as I would like a Sister Wife to be in charge of cleaning the house and taking care of the kids so I can do more important things like read and sleep, that will not be happening.

When I was on my mission eons ago, we had a contact that had asked for missionaries. His name was *Phillip Golden and we joked that he must be a “Golden contact” (missionary language for someone who is taught and easily accepts our beliefs and wants to join our church). We went to meet him and found out he was 76 years old. As we began to talk with him, we started thinking that maybe he was our Golden Contact because he seemed very eager to learn all he can and even talked readily of being baptized! Needless to say, we were giddy as school girls!

Until…

He then revealed that he wanted to be a ‘Mormon’ like his friend up north who had 3 wives.

Ruh-roh.

Come to find out he was on his 3rd or so marriage and his wife was in a home-I think for Alzheimer's or something-and he had a girlfriend on the side, who I guess he wanted to marry. I had very unmissionary-like thoughts like ‘does his ‘stuff’ even still work close to 80 (I don’t think Viagra was around then)’ and, ‘dude. This guy is an old perv!’

No matter how much we tried to explain to him that we did not practice polygamy, he wouldn’t get it! I don’t know if he thought we were saying that with a wink, you know, keeping it on the down low or something, but nothing would convince him otherwise! He wanted to join our church so he could marry him up some more women!

Boy, was he gonna be sorely disappointed, the old perv!

We handed him off to the elders (male missionaries). Let them deal with him.

*I use his real name only because he’s probably dead or too busy with all his wives to read my blog. Frankly, I think he should make the time for it but I guess being pervy takes up a lot of one’s time.