I have seen precisely one episode of HBO\u2019s signature series \u201cBig Love,\u201d ostensibly written about a polygamous family in Sandy, Utah, with roots in early Mormon doctrine. What I can tell you, from that episode, is that nothing in the show bears even a passing resemblance to Utah, polygamists, or Mormons. Trust me. I live in Sandy; I\u2019ve lived near polygamists, and I\u2019ve been a Mormon all my life. I really think you can take my word on this.<\/p>\n
Yet now, for whatever reason, the show is bringing its cameras inside a Mormon temple, something that the executive producers of the show claims \u201chas never been shown on television before.\u201d So now all the really weird crap that goes on in those temples will finally be exposed for all to see! If that won\u2019t bring ratings, nothing will. (I should note, however, that no one\u2019s ever shown a lemur eating a pineapple on television before, either. I think that\u2019s the final taboo.)<\/p>\n
I\u2019m of two or three minds on this issue. On the one hand, I find it offensive, but not in a \u201cDamn you to hell, heathen!\u201d kind of way. Rather, it\u2019s just plain rude. It feels a bit like someone has taken nude pictures of me \u2013 or the entire church – and posted them on the Internet. It\u2019s embarrassing whenever anyone violates something private, and most people have the decency to know when they\u2019re crossing the line. This just demonstrates a sort of classless, brutish disdain for my faith that doesn\u2019t sit well with people of good will, no matter what church they go to.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, I think it\u2019s ultimately not that big a deal. The mantra in the Church is that what happens in the temple is \u201csacred, not secret,\u201d and we want everyone in the world to see what happens, just as long as they have the spiritual context to appreciate it. You can debate the particulars of sacred vs. secret all day long, but in the age of the Internet, just about everything is a Google click away. It\u2019s not as if this is the first time this information has seen the light of day. Back in college, I remember hearing excerpts from the temple ceremony on the radio on Walter Martin\u2019s odious \u201cBible Answer Man\u201d program. Ex-Mormons, Anti-Mormons, and those with more gumption than manners are eager to dish as much dirt as possible. The Church survived them; they\u2019ll survive this without incident.<\/p>\n
My third hand, if I had one, says that some good will likely come of this. Too often, we in the church go out of our way to be as inoffensive and generically Protestant as possible. That may minimize opposition, but, at the same time, it doesn\u2019t really advance the cause. I hear and see all kinds of church advertisements filled with nice families and happy, cheery moments, and, yes, many Mormons have nice families with happy, cheery moments, but they don\u2019t have a monopoly on them. I\u2019m kind of tired of selling our church as Presbyterianism with Family Home Evenings on Monday nights.<\/p>\n
I know a pollster who\u2019s done a great deal of work for the LDS Church, and he discovered that convert baptisms are always highest in areas where the Church has experienced a great deal of controversy. He focused, for instance, on the firestorm surrounding the attempt to get a steeple placed atop the Mormon temple in Boston. Local newspapers were running all kinds of articles about the evils of Mormons, and, as a result, a good number of decent people approached the Church itself to get their side of the story. (I\u2019d be interested to see if the same things happens, or has happened, in the aftermath of Prop.8 in California.)<\/p>\n
So many will watch Big Love, and they\u2019ll be weirded out by something for which they have no proper context, and we Mormons will once again look like circus freaks to the public at large, but a few people of good will will realize there\u2019s probably more to the story. And they\u2019ll seek out those clean-cut guys in white shirts and start asking a few questions. And, at the end of the day, the Church will be a little bit bigger as a result.<\/p>\n
As for me, I won\u2019t watch. (But only because I don\u2019t have HBO.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ihave seen precisely one episode of HBO\u2019s signature series \u201cBig Love,\u201d ostensibly written about a polygamous family in Sandy, Utah, with roots in early Mormon doctrine. What I can tell you, from that episode, is that nothing in the show bears even a passing resemblance to Utah, polygamists, or Mormons. Trust me. I live in ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}