In Latter-day Saint history, we have some things that make some people squirm. That’s because they don’t know history and they don’t believe in practical religion. Let’s explain the last one first.
Practical religion is a term that means, to be one of the faithful, you need to practice the religion. Mormons are a practical religion in that we don’t believe faith alone (sola fide) saves you. That’s a Protestant notion that, if you confess belief in Jesus with your mouth, that you are eternally saved, no matter what you do afterwards. This is the false doctrine that underpins all Evangelical Christian sects. It forces them to accept the notion that a serial killer can find salvation by accepting Jesus on his way to the execution chamber, but a non-Christian who spent his life doing good to his fellow man will burn in hell forever.
Practical religion means believers have to act for their own salvation. The ancient Hebrews practiced a practical religion. God expected them to conquer the Promised Land after forty years in the wilderness. They had to arm themselves, train, and prepare to fight. Then, he would provide miraculous support for them, as he did with Jericho. However, the walls of that fabled city didn’t fall down for them while they sat by passively, waiting. God required effort from them. Effort and faith go together. For Latter-day Saints, it means when Zion’s streets will be paved with gold, we will have gathered the gold and done the paving work. When a temple stands in Zion, it will be because we have constructed it. The New Jerusalem is a monumental construction project yet to be built.
Regarding history, many believers don’t understand this. They read the Bible as if it was a fairy tale with magical happenings. The history contained in the Bible has a purpose, to build faith. It isn’t intended to be an unbiased narrative. Nevertheless, the history tells us of struggle, combat, victories, losses, judgments, tribulations, famines, plagues, and other events that real people had to endure. Those things came upon the people because of their faithfulness or lack thereof. The historians of the Bible saw the world through the lens of blessings and cursings.
When we read the Book of Mormon, we see what we call the “pride cycle,” where the Nephites become wealthy from God’s blessings, then they become prideful, arrogant, and forgetful of their duties toward God. God then sends them wars and tribulations to humble them and the cycle starts over. This is pretty much mirrors routine economic cycles that occur throughout history. They naturally occur in every economy, but the writers of the Book of Mormon see the world through the Hebrew lens of blessings and cursings.
As usual, my preface to my main point is longer than what I always planned in advance. What I want the reader to consider is that modern Christians, including many Latter-day Saints, no longer believe in a practical religion. They don’t think of God blessing and cursing people because of what they do. They don’t believe that God would destroy a city like Sodom or Ammonihah because it violated God’s commandments. They don’t believe that God would cause plagues to come upon Israelites because a few people didn’t keep the Sabbath or hid away a forbidden, golden idol taken as a spoil from a conquered Gentile city.
In most places where Latter-day Saints live, they are a minority. Only in Utah do we find enough members concentrated where they form a significant enough majority to exercise power in a democratic government. We believe in democracy. In a government based on democratic principles, the majority sets the agenda. Because of a false sense of meekness, we have been reticent about exercising that power. I have lived my whole life outside of Utah and been in the tiny Latter-day Saint majority. Nobody in the community where I live cares what Mormons think. Where we share common values with other Christians, we join with them to vote on issues, but our numbers are relatively insignificant. Only in the Western mountain regions of America are we concentrated in numbers to be significant politically. My question is: “Why don’t we use that power?”
We have sought to be good neighbors. We have built wholesome, safe communities that have attracted the Gentiles to live among us. Once they have settled with us, they begin to undermine our communities. They want stores open on Sunday. They want liquor stores. They want bars and strip clubs. They want adult-oriented businesses. They bring those things, even while many of them claim to be good Christians, because their belief is that God saves them for their confession of faith, not their works. They think they can booze it up, have affairs with their neighbor, and cheat in their business dealings and still go to heaven. Mormons may commit those same sins, but we don’t fool ourselves in thinking we are candidates for the celestial kingdom while we are doing them. We allowed Gentiles to take over the politics of the city where the Church has its center. To prove we are tolerant and welcoming, we allowed Gentiles, Jews, and homosexuals to exercise power over us. We hired corrupt Gentile professors to teach our university students. They negated the very values to which we supposedly devote our lives. They brought corruption into our midst and, perhaps, we were fine with it as long as we were making a profit from it.
Now look what we have got: Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesting in our streets, vandalizing statues of our founders, and committing violence against our citizens. We could have used our collective power to oppose them long ago, but we sent the signal of political weakness. There is nothing that Democrats, communists, and revolutionaries respect but power and force. We were unwilling to protect our mountain Zion from them.
It was not always like that. The United Order was practiced by some 80,000 members of the Church at one time, not only out of religious motives, but as a means of resistance to the federal government who sought to displace us from power despite our majority in the territory of Deseret. A band known as the Danites enforced our standards against this Gentile incursion. The Danites were an unofficial group of men who used force to deter enemies of the Church. Modern members squirm to even consider this. In the nineteenth century, on the frontiers of civilization, these avenging angels protected the innocent from those who would destroy the saints. They protected prophets. They protected women. As I have written before, it may have been the Danites who castrated a federal governor who sexually assaulted one of our women.
Is this kind of period returning to Utah? The wicked Democrats would destroy all religions, including ours. They don’t believe in the free exercise of religion. They speak in terms of “freedom of worship,” which means you get to pick a church and then not practice your religion in public. It means you don’t let your religious views get in the way of their evil policies. Does our religion prohibit abortion or gay marriage? Well, just don’t get involved in the politics of the matter because that is a public debate in which religion has no relevance. That’s the way they think about freedom of religion. For us, freedom of religion means free to allow religious speech and to express religious opinions regarding public policy.
Is it time for a new kind of Danite to emerge? If Antifa and BLM threatened to deface a temple, would we stand to defend it? If protesters were going to harass us in our meetinghouses, would we meekly end the meeting or would we physically eject them so we can worship in peace? If they “dox” our leaders and threaten their homes, would we stand up and protect their safety? Or do we cower in our homes and pray? What did God require of ancient Israel and the Nephites? Did he require them to stand up and prepare to defend, prior to him exercising his power in our behalf?
Do we need to have large-scale, armed (but peaceful) protests in the streets to intimidate evildoers who would destroy our communities and our peace? Do we need to have loud protests in front of legislators and judges to remind them who has the power in the community? We seek to avoid contention, but when the devil brings it to our doorstep, do we cower in fear?
Let us drive the wicked from our midst. The bars, the enterprises of vice, the gays, the transgenders, and the anti-Mormons who attack us—send them packing. Make it so that their businesses are unprofitable and withdraw fellowship from the wicked. The politicians who promote abortion, lotteries, gambling, legalization of drugs, marijuana dispensaries, and transgenders reading in public libraries to your kindergartners—take away their power and scare them off with your militancy. Let the wicked know the fear of God! Drive off the drug dealers, the gang members, and enforce immigration laws that bring them into our cities.
Latter-day Citizen, it’s time for you to stand up and be heard. Prepare to defend Zion. Stand before the evil. If evil attempts to shout you down, shut down the evil. If force is required, then use force. If it can be done without violence then do it without violence. Do not tolerate the evil anymore. If you don’t we are going to lose the land our forefathers settled and tamed. You can no longer be the victims of mobs because there is nowhere left to run. There is no unclaimed land in which we can build another Zion in today’s world. It’s time to defend the claim of Zion. It’s time to expand its borders. It’s time to stand for truth and righteousness with your strength, power, and faith. God will not defend a Zion we are unwilling to defend ourselves.
If you’re waiting on the prophet to tell you to do this, you may be waiting until it’s too late. God may be waiting to see if his people are committed to purging their lives and their communities of sin, before he tells his spokesman to take the next steps. It is easier to steer a moving car than a parked car. Remember, we are not to be commanded in all things, but to do good on our own initiative. Will history record that we Latter-day Saints squandered to opportunity to build Zion, because we were not brave enough to defend it?
ADDENDUM
Several days after writing this post, I came across a Business Insider article that listed the top 17 cities in the West to live in after the pandemic is over. Six of the seventeen are in LDS-dominated communities: Salt Lake City, Ogden, Provo, Logan, in Utah and Idaho Falls, and Pocatello in Idaho. Of all the states hit hardest by Coronavirus, the Dem states experienced the most deaths, despite aggressive lockdown policies, curtailment of citizens' rights, and blatant disregard for the welfare of the elderly in nursing homes. These liberals never realize that it is their politics that cause these kinds of social disasters. They will move into the various cities on the list and bring their damnable politics and opinions with them. (Think of all the New Yorkers who retired to Florida, particularly Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, two of the most corrupt political machines in the country.) They will be heading our way soon. Brace yourselves. Unless we Latter-day Saints become more socially and politically assertive, we will lose the Zion that we have built so far.
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