Word: mormon
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...Around here your spirit gets hungry, lonely," she says in a hushed voice. "Sometimes I just want to be quiet, to have beauty and reverence." But then, Hagee turns on this feeling with a Puritan self-criticism that many Mormons seem to lapse into. "This urge," she says, is "probably a weakness." Instead of counting on church services for instilling her with piety, she reprimands herself. I should follow the lesson of Mormon friends, she tells herself, who find time each day to "commune or nourish themselves spiritually." But, she adds, "I need help to do that...
...Mormon undergraduates here agree that the university branch is more intellectual than their churches back home. Hagee's perspective is typical: Her ward in Missouri is largely bluecollar, while the church here is predominantly professionals. Talks at the Cambridge church are often witty and well written, but at Hagee's hometown congregation there are often speeches by young children and teenagers. Another Mormon says that while services here center on church philosophy, those at home often try to prove the historical truth of the church, such as the revelations of Joseph Smith, its founder...
...some ways the Mormon church is a potpourri of contradictions. As a lay church it is democratic and has strains of communalism. The tasks of each branch are spread among all members, and anyone can speak in relief society, priesthood, Sunday school and sacrament meetings. Members are encouraged to work out their individual relationship to God and to follow their revelations. The church's extensive welfare programs--financed by its awesome tithings--allow "anyone in need to get it immediately," according to Peterson...
...church's organization shows a feudally hierarchic side of Mormonism that helps lead to its political conservatism. The impact of revelations depends on one's position in the church: Prophet Kimball's revelations can change all Mormon doctrine (Prophet Wilford Woodruff did just that on the polygamy questions in the 1890s, after a federal crackdown on polygamy sent many prominent Mormons to prison.) The revelations of the head of the Boston stake (or diocese) will affect the stake (in the choice of a branch president, for example), and each individual's revelations are restricted to his or her self...
Added to this strange mixture is the church's strong affinity for capitalism. As if guided by the Weberian theory of the Protestant ethic, the Mormons tie prosperity to their religion; material success is taken as a sign of the Lord's rewarding Mormons. Larry Dewey's father, for example, believes that the good things that have come to him since his conversion to Mormonism are directly attributable to the church. The work ethic is evident in Mormon undergraduates, who are not coincidentally often...