by

I am a Mormon and I reject all adjectives and sub-categorizations. I have no respect for attempts to conventionalize them. Regardless of what individual members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe, how they approach scripture, history or politics, they are my people, my fellow-citizens and my kin.



One hundred and fifty years ago, two of the largest personalities in Church leadership were Brigham Young and Orson Pratt. They were each powerful and influential and had each taken Joseph Smith’s teachings in dramatically different directions. At one point Young was so frustrated with Pratt that the First Presidency and Twelve held council over him. Pratt offered to resign his membership in the Quorum. And yet, despite their erstwhile antagonism, when Young had a job that needed intellectual finesse, it was frequently Pratt that he called. A public announcement of polygamy, or a new edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, and Pratt was Young’s man.

The differences between Young and Pratt were chasmal by today’s standards. They grappled over the fundamental nature of God—what Joseph Smith declared was essential and basic knowledge for salvation. Yet when Heber C. Kimball, Young’s faithful lieutenant, walked into the office on October 1, 1860 he declared:

[T]here were men that were trying to ride down Br O[rson]. Pratt; but it would not do, he Br Pratt, was a man of unusual firmness. He said the President [Brigham Young] remarked the other day [that] if Bro Orson was chopped up in inch pieces each piece would cry out Mormonism was true. [1]

I take comfort in the reality that the individual in the Church with whom I have the largest divergence is likely closer in perspective to me than that same person and Brigham Young. And if we can claim Young together, we certainly can claim each other. Orson Pratt did not start a therapy group for ALDS (Atomist Latter-day Saints, or perhaps Anti-Adam-God Latter-day Saints), perhaps because in his core, he viewed himself as an essential feature of the body of Christ and the Kingdom of God. Though Young prevailed in his disputes with Pratt while he lived, some of his points of divergence are now viewed as heresy. In certain ways, Pratt won the victory of history. But this is only something that one can say outside of their lived experience. It is essentially irrelevant to them as people and as Saints.

I know that I am deeply frustrating to some members who take a fundamentalist approach to scripture and presentist views of history. My hope is that with time, as we serve together, they will come to love me (though not because I am deserving) and their growing empathy for me will obviate any tendency toward antipathy. [2] I have found that as I have better understood and loved my fellow Saints, any frustrations with them have withered. This is not to say that I still don’t get bugged or that the prophetic itch doesn’t need scratching on occasion. However, I am willing, regardless of what you believe or what you do, to hail you as a brother or sister in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in token or remembrance of the everlasting covenant, in which covenant I receive you to fellowship, in a determination that is fixed, immovable, and unchangeable, to be your friend and brother through the grace of God in the bonds of love, to walk in all the commandments of God blameless, in thanksgiving, forever and ever.

_____________________________