The image of Mormonism has changed. If you watched the old “Man’s Search for Happiness” film (or film-strip, if you served a mission back in the day), you saw white people, neatly dressed, men with crew cuts, and women with dresses and bouffant hairdos. Now, we have ads and web sites images of young, professional-looking people, forty-something skateboard dudes, black lawyers, New York playwrights, Brazilian MMA fighters, and other images of diversity. A popular blogger and YouTuber is a tatooed LDS chick. The Shaytards put their entire family life on YouTube, showing that latter-day saints are fun-loving people with messy homes, mouthy kids, and mortgages to pay. The message we have been sending for the past twenty years is “we’re just like you.”
However, if you get outside the online social circles where members are wont to gather, you find that the same prevailing bigotry against latter-day saints is still there. Mormons are marginalized. We are regarded as a quasi-Masonic threat to liberty. Anti-Mormons have firmly implanted prejudices portraying Joseph Smith as a pedophile polygamist. The evangelicals have trained their people to the point of Pavlovian conditioning so that, when they hear the word “Mormon,” they respond with pre-programmed thoughts of “they preach another gospel,” “they believe Jesus and Satan are brothers,” and “they believe they have to work their way to heaven.”
Meanwhile, we just try to convince people to like us and that we’re nice. It’s time for that to end.
Our pioneer ancestors didn’t go to Utah to be nice. They were persecuted and driven from civilization and they went, like the Pilgrims of old, to a place where they literally had nothing except what they could carry with them. They risked starvation, endured infestations of crickets, and hostile Indian attacks. When they managed to survive and begin to build a viable city, the government sent troops to occupy Salt Lake City. We buried the temple foundations to hide them and threatened to burn down the entire city if the army started trouble. The federal government took all the Church properties and put our leaders in jail. Through it all, we resisted. In most cases, we resisted passively. We organized the United Order as a means of resistance. We boycotted Gentile merchants for a long time to keep them from getting a foothold. We organized to build railroads, undercutting the outsiders on labor costs, to prevent Gentiles and their vices from corrupting our communities. Some federal officers left Utah in a hurry for accosting our women and violating their virtue. Not all of them left with all of their body parts intact.
Back then, we were militant. We understood that the world, under Satan’s dominion, wanted to prevent the Kingdom of God from rising in the desert. We fought back. The saints were tough. They were hardened by years of trouble. They were not always saintly in their fight against the world. I think we need more of that.
Before I sent my sons on missions, I sent them to Seminary, but I also taught them how to defend the Church. I taught them about polygamy, Fanny Alger, the priesthood ban, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre. They had strong testimonies. I didn’t want them going off to preach the gospel and have some anti-Mormon blindside them with something they had never heard before. They were never going to be shaken by the “CES Letter” or some other apostate claims. I also hardened them for missionary life. They learned to do chores they didn’t like. They got up early and went to bed at a decent hour. I taught them to defend themselves, their families, and the Church. They didn’t always like it, they developed resilience that is lacking in many modern missionaries.
A few years ago, some missionaries came to me after teaching a neighbor to whom I had referred them. The neighbor was a black pastor. He responded positively to the first discussions we had together in his home, but when he had the missionaries alone, he asked them about the priesthood ban. Can you believe they had never even heard of it before? What parent would send their kid out to preach the gospel and not prepare them for opposition? The missionaries came to me (I was the branch president) for an explanation. I gave them the history of it and they were shaken. They were not spiritually strong or resilient. Their testimonies were weak.
What was the purpose of their mission? What are we trying to accomplish? Are we preaching the gospel to tell people to be nice? President Gordon B. Hinckley told a story about his mission in England. He began to feel the strain from the constant anti-Mormon opposition. He and his companion decided they were going to just preach Jesus Christ and avoid preaching Joseph Smith and the Restoration, hoping that would calm things down. He reported that be gradually felt a depressing spirit come over him and he thought about giving up and going home. In a moment of deep reflection and prayer, he received correction from the Spirit. He was instructed to resume teaching the controversial Restoration and the account of Joseph Smith. When he did so, the Spirit returned to him and he began to have success amid the opposition.
We must be militant in our testimony about the gospel. We seek not to offend, but the world around us has to be challenged. The scales of darkness don’t leave a person unless you shake up their worldview. Unless they become convinced that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the repository of the keys and that all faith, repentance, and baptism are moot unless a legal administrator of the Kingdom of God performs the ordinances of salvation, they are lost to God. The Lord has provided salvation in other kingdoms, but he wants his children to be sealed to their families and to him, by the power of the Melchizedek Priesthood. Coming to that realization means jarring a comfortable worldview for many people. Many people will reject it because of their prejudices and false teachings, but they need to understand what they are rejecting. You must be willing to risk offending someone to share that message.
In online forums, you need to stand up boldly and confront people who defame the Church. You need to correct them. They may reject it, but other observers will think the liars and bigots are right if you don’t stand up for the truth.
I’m not asking you to become a Danite. You don't need to be able to ricochet a bullet off an anti-Mormon's belt buckle like Porter Rockwell. You do need to confront the wicked and call them to repentance. Who are the wicked? The ones who fight against the gospel. What if they get mean and nasty? What if they threaten you? What if they have means to do you harm? How is that different that what our ancestors faced? Rise to the challenge. Be a militant latter-day saint. Stand up and be counted. Be as pleasant as you can. Nevertheless, Brigham Young said that it is foolish to take offense where none is intended, but only a fool doesn’t take offense when it is intended. Don’t be lukewarm about the gospel. Preach it boldly and let the devils rage. Angels will attend you. Buck up and go to it.
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