I watched the first half of "The Mormons" last night on PBS. It was obviously well produced and thought provoking. I had some other opinions about it too, but I thought that I would throw it out there and see what you thought. I am still formulating what I think, so I will respond too.
Nathan
12 comments:
I found it interesting to see the mormons from an unbiased view. There were definately good points of view and not so good, a little distorted. We saw the 2nd half. And found it interesting. We are going to watch the 2nd half of the series tonight.
Er
At first Tony and I thought maybe we shouldn't watch it. I said "yeah we better turn it to Oprah." But we continued to watch and it was interesting. But I think tonight will even be more so, I'm interested in what they say about the mormons today. I wonder if they'll mention Katrina or any of the other disasters where the mormons were down helping, organizing and leading. Before, the government help, or the celebrities for that matter.
Rach
I thought that it was interesting, and mostly fair. The thing that seemed biased, though, is that it was like they were only trying to be fair from an outsider's perspective. They asked questions, maybe appropriately so for this kind of show, that would interest an outsider, and tried to explain everything from how an outsider would want it explained.
An example of this is the discussion of the different accounts of the first vision. They said that Joseph must have been refining his story to make himself more important with each version. They said, "that must be why he explained it differently each time". What they did not give is the context for each of the accounts. Who was he saying it to? What was the situation in relating it? I have had a copy of all of the accounts of the first vision for a long time, and have never thought that Joseph was trying to build himself up.
Another thing, and maybe this is the most glaring weakness in their presentation, is that they completely left out what was driving the early saints. They talked about Joseph being charismatic, or the people just being poor farmers, or that they wanted to escape persecution, or that they had an overactive libido, or wanted to find a utopian Zion (or they just wanted to dance ;-).
What they did not (and honestly, probably could not) relate is the deepness of spiritual conviction that the early saints had. The fact that they had deep and abiding testimonies that would survive all that they had gone through is the real miracle of Mormonism.
Tonight, they will probably miss the miracle of the deep conviction that the Mormons today have. They will talk about strict rules, and requirements for obedience to commandments. They will talk of the church excommunicating members for going against leaders.
They will miss the fact that we expect, and receive, real blessings for obedience. I expect that they will miss the fact that we continue to love and try to minister to those who are not as active. They will probably miss the fact that excommunication is extremely rare, and never used against someone just for being inactive, or for not paying tithing, or for breaking the word of wisdom.
So with all of that (sorry for rambling), I still think that this is an overall positive thing for the church. I think that it will cause people to ask questions, and investigate things further. We do not want people to be converted on great production value, anyway.
Here is an interesting editorial article from the NY Times. Again, it is from the outside perspective, but he is taking this as a positive experience learning about the church.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/arts/television/30morm.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
We are really interested to read what you all have to say about this special because we are not able to see it here. Let us know how it goes and what they say.
Mom and Dad, you can watch it online at www.pbs.org/mormons. I would be interested to hear what you think too.
Recently in my first amendment class we were studying free exercise of religion cases. An early landmark case was the Reynolds case which involved one of numerous polygamy prosecutions discussed in the documentary. Of course the discussion was as much about polygamy as it was about the legal reasoning of the case (of which there was very little). A common misperception came up there that again surfaced last night in the documentary. People assume that because Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants speaks about polygamy and also speaks about the New and Everlasting Covenant, that the two are one and the same. They read this with verse 2 of Section 131 which states that to receive the highest degree of glory one must enter into the New and Everlasting Covenant. The documentary made the same false statement that my professor made, that a man must practice polygamy to enter into the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom. You would think that such a statement would have been pointed out as incorrect prior to airing. At least with my class I had an opportunity to correct that misconception.
However, overall I thought it was well done. There were times when I began to get angry at comments but invariably they were followed by someone representing a better point of view. What I found frustrating is they never fully explained what we believed before they began to attack the position.
Shad
I agree with you Shad. I noticed that too about sections 131, and 132.
Overall, it was good. I even enjoyed the second night more than the first. I appreciated the coverage given to the hurricane response, and thought that the family that they highlighted was interesting (with the daughter that was terminally ill).
There were a few times when they were off the mark. The thing that I thought was almost comical was the empty chairs that they showed for minutes on end when discussing excommunication. They were set up in a court room style, with a single chair where the "accused" would face the "jury".
I have been involved in quite a few disciplinary councils (none of my own, thankfully), and in every case, the stake presidency went out of their way to make the person feel comfortable--even having them sit next to them up front. There have been various outcomes, but I have never felt the person had any feelings of disrespect--only an outpouring of love.
I thought that the missionary section was tastefully done as well. Beforehand, I thought that they might not do well on that.
I finally watched the show over several nights on-line. You guys already touched on my thoughts for the most part but I really didn't like watching it. According to the Church Website there is a huge increase in traffic and questions posted to the site and that's positive and I'm sure many will ask questions but I still just felt like they applied too much credibility to those who left the church for various reasons. It's like talking to a recently fired disgruntled employee, asking them to describe their former employer. By their perception of course, they are right and the employer is wrong and they love to tell their story. As for Joseph and his hallucinations and mortal drives, the one thing they avoided most was discussion about the Book of Mormon. They mentioned that he claims to have translated it, that it sounds a lot like the old testament, that there is absolutely no physical evidence of those civilizations but that's it. It's like they avoided it because they otherwise couldn't explain how this young man came by such an intricate and complex work. If the makers of this show really wanted to know where to look for confirmation of the reality of Joseph's prophetic call it would have been to study further the Book of Mormon and I'm sure they were directed that way many times by the members. Instead it is a lot more fun to be focused primarily on the controversy of Mormonism. Just my thoughts...Late as they are. - Daniel
I, like Daniel, also just finished watching the show over several days online. While I obviously wouldn't agree with a lot of it, I think I would have to say I liked it all-in-all.
The thing I keep thinking is that if I were not a church member, this show would certainly perk my curiosity. Rather than think "Criminy, my neighbors belong to this church, we need to avoid them.", I would be more inclined to ask them about some of these things.
I especially liked the portion about the girl who is terminally ill (hope that doesn’t sound morbid) Felt the Spirit as they showed the love she and her family have for each other.
I think it's interesting how 90% of our church members don't even know what the Mountain Meadows Massacre is. I'm afraid Jon Voight's movie this summer will do a lot more harm than this documentary will.
They did a good job of showing how diverse the church is as well.
But what do I know. I'm not a Utah Mormon yet.
-Tyson
I think that most people, inside the church and out, confuse the culture of Utah with the history and doctrine of the church. Just because they do it in Utah does not mean that is what the church is about.
For example, people talk about the unwillingness of members to reach out to people of other faiths. They may not do that in Utah, but that is not the case here. Our cubscouts go on a "ten commandments" hike every year. They hike to ten different churches (denominations) , and at each one, one of the leaders of that church talks about one of the 10 commandments, and how they teach about it.
I thought that the documentary mixed in some Utah culturalism into discussion.
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