AboutCindy Beggs Expertise Although I am not a member of the LDS Church, I can answer most of your general questions re: the LDS faith. Please no LDS bashing. I have a love for the Church's history.
Experience Although I am not a member of the LDS faith, I have been facinated with the Church's history for over 30 years.
Organizations Mount St. Mary's Alumni
Publications Master's Thesis in Mount St. Mary's Library in Los Angeles, CA.
Education/Credentials Bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts. Minors: Religious Studies and psychology. Master's degree in the Humanities/Cultural Studies.
Question QUESTION: Did you have to pledge, promise, swear to do the things that are mentioned in the book "Mountain Meadow Massacre"?
Have the leaders mellowed over the years or are they just being political correct?
ANSWER: Hello. Thank-you, for your question.
Have the leaders mellowed over the years? I believe that there is a desire within the Church to look as Christian as they can possibly look to outsiders - while still keeping their LDS values and religion as intact as it can be while doing so. You can see evidence of this in the interviews with the press by Gordon B. Hinckley that are readily available on the Internet. Are they trying to be politically correct? Yes, I believe in some ways they are trying to be as mainstream as they can be and still maintain most of their LDS values and beliefs.
The Oath of Vengeance, spoken about in the diary of Heber C. Kimball, in 1845, was a part of the LDS endowment ceremony. It basically stated that there is a "private and immediate duty" to avenge the blood of the prophets on this nation. Participants of the endowment ceremony were also commanded to "obey all orders of the priesthood, temporal and spiritual in matters of life and death." These oaths were removed from the endowment ceremony in the early 1900's.
Brigham Young believed in the doctrine of blood atonement, which meant that there were some sins a person could commit that the blood of Christ could not atone for and those who committed those sins could only achieve the highest heaven by spilling their blood upon the ground. A few LDS individuals practiced this individually. Some of these individuals could have been a part of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. In 1978, this doctrine was repudiated.
I hope this helps.
Lacinda
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QUESTION: Are there still secret rituals in the church today. Do they still take any kind of oath that we might find disturbing?
Thanks
Answer First of all, Jimmie, thank-you for the very generous rating and the volunteer of the month nomination! I appreciate that very much!
To answer your question, I believe that all churches have rituals in their worship ceremonies. I think that the one that sticks in my mind the most with regard to the LDS Church is the temple ceremony ritual. I believe that the temple ceremony as it stands today is very innocuous and not worthy of the criticism that it has received.
You can listen to the temple ceremony on the Internet; someone taped it. You can listen to the 1984 and 1990 temple endowment ceremonies and determine for yourself if the secret rituals that go on in the temple are disturbing to you or not. They are not disturbing to me.
Most faithful LDS members who attend the temple will also go on to attend and repeat the ceremonies over and over again for the dead.
Yes, they do take oaths in the temple. Men make the oath to obey God and the ladies make an oath to obey their husbands. Whether or not someone is disturbed by the oaths is open to debate. The temple ceremony has gone through a few metamorphosis and the powers that be have taken some of the more "offensive" things out of the temple ceremony; such as the penalties if they ever spoke to outsiders about what they learned in the temple, etc. If you are still interested, listen and decide for yourself. That's what I did. Good luck!
