Faith column: Bashing Mormons, based on old doctrines, must stop

Mormon-bashing continues to be alive and well.

How's this for a headline (in strange, fractured, white-on-black graphics)? "Latterday Taint: How Glenn Beck is Driven by Mormonism."

In this Oct. 21 article in the Boise Weekly, a Boston writer named Adam Reilly makes a bogus claim. He connects Fox commentator Glenn Beck's political views and Beck's membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Reilly declares that Beck's anti-communist, mean-spirited, off-the-wall rhetoric (like, President Obama has a deep hatred of white people) is rooted in his Mormon faith.

The article itself is hardly worth arguing against. It is inconsistent and confusing. Reilly "proves" his point by showing that Beck embodies two Mormon-related sources": Ezra Taft Benson, a committed Cold War anti-communist from the Eisenhower administration (who much later became LDS President); and a conspiracy theorist named Skousen, from whom the Mormon church officially distanced itself in 1979.

The problem is, this sort of article just keeps on encouraging the license so many people seem to feel to take potshots at the LDS church.

I am not a Mormon. I probably disagree (respectfully) with most doctrines of the Mormon church. But it just makes me crazy that so many people - many "liberal-minded" people as well as "conservative" religionist - seem to feel that it's always open season on the LDS.

Let's take a couple of hypothetical situations, about other faiths.

Suppose there is a very dictatorial leader who happens to be a Presbyterian. She harks back enthusiastically to John Calvin's unfortunate practice of subduing dissenters, even unto burning them at stake. This bad leader looks to the worst practices of the 16th-century founder of her faith. Because of this, do we indict the 21st-century Presbyterian Church as evilly contributing to totalitarianism in the world, and warn people to be aware of its subtly-destructive doctrines? Probably not.

Or suppose there is a modern leader who happens to be a Unitarian Universalist. He feels women should be subordinate to men, and sees society's decline as a result of feminism. He harks back enthusiastically to the bad attitude of one of our mid-20th-century Unitarian Universalist Association presidents, Samuel Eliot - Eliot fiercely opposed the ordination of women.

Because of this, do we indict the 21st-century UU church as contributing to the denial of human rights and warn people about its soul-killing influence? Probably not.

You get my point. Pointing to outdated doctrines or practices of any group, in order to discredit that group, is an act of meanness of spirit and narrowness of mind. It is not right. I wish it would stop, and I particularly wish it would stop in popular writing about Mormons.

As a Unitarian Universalist, I am called to critical thinking, so I will always examine arguments with as open a mind as possible, ready to critique, even judge, if necessary.

At the same time - and much more importantly - I and many others of all kinds of faith are called to approach the world with as open a heart as possible. Knowing that our faiths have all had big gaps in historical understanding of almost every social issue we can think of, we are called to look at others through that lens.

We are called to the very difficult practice of examining the heart and soul of our own faith, understanding the glory and also the falling short of the mark - then, and only then, in respectful knowledge, speaking of others.

We are sisters and brothers in this human journey, called to embody the Holy as best our fallible human selves can do that. Let's keep trying.

The Rev. Elizabeth Linton Greene is minister at Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Contact her at www.boiseuu.org.