What's The Difference Between LDS and Fundamentalists?

[NerdyHil]

On 7/10/2016 at 5:30 PM, moreorlessnu said:

Does anyone know anything about the Mormon practice of "baptizing the dead"? A Mormon friend keeps grilling for family tree information in an attempt to baptize deceased relatives.

Okay, here's the low-down on baptisms for the dead: in theory it's supposed to help all of humanity receive access to have a chance at salvation. The names for the people who are baptized(and all the other temple bits) normally come from family history. That's why family history is such a big thing in the LDS church. It's such an important deal that it's part of the four part mission statement of the LDS church.  http://www.mormonwiki.com/Four-fold_Mission_of_the_Church It's also important in the family history department because along with being baptized for a dead person, they will also get sealed to their family and get their endowments taken out. Once a person goes through the temple the first time for themselves, every other time they act as a proxy for a dead person. This can either be family names submitted or randomly selected dead person. Baptism for the dead is normally done by the youth of the LDS church (12-18). So, you have a whole gaggle of teenagers who are baptized in quick succession for a whole list of people. The internet has done wonders with not doing the "temple work"(in LDS lingo) for the same person over and over again. I know it was a big deal to do the work for famous people for several years. The church leaders kind of put the kibosh on that unless they are a direct relation. There are some rules about who can and can't have their work done. There was a big deal made about not doing Holocaust victims work a few years back. I know my paternal grandfather has to have approval from the guys in charge in SLC to have his work done because he was excommunicated from the LDS church. Did that help? If you want I can put up some pictures of the forms used when someone is doing the proxy temple work for a dead person. I'm house-sitting at my parents and that stuff is everywhere in this house. 

[Buzzard]

10 hours ago, NerdyHil said:

I know my paternal grandfather has to have approval from the guys in charge in SLC to have his work done because he was excommunicated from the LDS church.

Question on the excommunication thing.  Lets say you have a guy who was raised in the church, gets married (and divorced) and married again in the temple.  He has children.

What do you have to do to be excommunicated?  If this guy does some REALLY bad shit that the church knows about, is he kicked out of his eternal family?  Can the children/grandchildren petition to have him "reinstated" at some point in the future?

[nausicaa]

23 hours ago, Buzzard said:

Question on the excommunication thing.  Lets say you have a guy who was raised in the church, gets married (and divorced) and married again in the temple.  He has children.

What do you have to do to be excommunicated?  If this guy does some REALLY bad shit that the church knows about, is he kicked out of his eternal family?  Can the children/grandchildren petition to have him "reinstated" at some point in the future?

Excommunication can be for something really bad, like murder or raping your children. Other transgressions however can include being gay and in a relationship with someone of the same gender (with no sense of guilt or desire to change said relationship status) or being very vocal and critical of essential aspects of the church (i.e., the people who ran a podcast pushing for the LDS church to ordain women). Church leaders are held to stricter standards and can be excommunicated for using their positions to elicit sexual favors, embezzle money from the church, abuse their wives and cover it up.

Excommunication lasts at least one year, but you can be reinstated. You must repent, a council must approve it, and you are rebaptised and must be resealed to family members. 

If you do not repent and remain excommunicated, I don't think you're kicked out of your eternal family, so much as you are not going to make it to the same planet they are, so you'll be in purgatory while your wife is chilling on her planet. She might be able to celestially marry another man up there, since there is plural marriage in the celestial kingdom. Don't know if she has to move to his planet or not. (Sentences I thought I'd never type...)

I do know Mormons who have divorced the spouse they were sealed to and the spouse went on the renounce the LDS church, drink, do drugs, et cetera. The devout Mormon spouse was told by her bishop not to worry about it, even though they were sealed, he would have to earn his way to the celestial kingdom, which he wasn't doing, so she wouldn't have to deal with him in the afterlife. 

I'm guessing the LDS church keeps it on the down low because it doesn't sound palatable in the 21st century, but I'm sure they believe all of these devout abandoned wives are plural married to other devout Mormon men. (Whose own devout wives I'm sure are thrilled about it).

[Buzzard]

5 minutes ago, nausicaa said:

I don't think you're kicked out of your eternal family, so much as you are not going to make it to the same planet they are, so you'll be in purgatory while your wife is chilling on her planet. She might be able to celestially marry another man up there, since there is plural marriage in the celestial kingdom. Don't know if she has to move to his planet or not. (Sentences I thought I'd never type...)

Hold the beepy cart... what? Theres plural marriage in the kingdom but also planets?

Johnny is a good mormon man.  He drinks only root beer and pays his tithes, wearing his garments daily and converts all the people he sees at the airport.  When he's 22 he marries Jane, an equally pious woman.  They have one child, Sam.  When Sam is 1 Johnny tries to save a kitty from a tree, falls, and dies.

Who lives on Johnny's planet?

Jane and Sam continue their lives and at the age of 25 she remarries.  Mark was Johnny's next door neighbor and Mark secretly had a thing for Johnny's sister.  It was kind of squicky so Mark and Johnny didnt get along.  They have 3 more children.  Jane dies at 62.

Who lives on Jane's planet?

Sam moves to a retirement community outside Provo and falls madly in love with the widow of the Bishop, Tanya.  They live happily ever after until they die within a week of eachother at the age of 95.

Who lives on their planets or are they together?

 

My head hurts.

[nausicaa]

Just now, Buzzard said:

Johnny is a good mormon man.  He drinks only root beer and pays his tithes, wearing his garments daily and converts all the people he sees at the airport.  When he's 22 he marries Jane, an equally pious woman.  They have one child, Sam.  When Sam is 1 Johnny tries to save a kitty from a tree, falls, and dies.

Who lives on Johnny's planet?

Jane and Sam continue their lives and at the age of 25 she remarries.  Mark was Johnny's next door neighbor and Mark secretly had a thing for Johnny's sister.  It was kind of squicky so Mark and Johnny didnt get along.  They have 3 more children.  Jane dies at 62.

Who lives on Jane's planet?

Sam moves to a retirement community outside Provo and falls madly in love with the widow of the Bishop, Tanya.  They live happily ever after until they die within a week of eachother at the age of 95.

Who lives on their planets or are they together?

Okay, so you only share a planet with the spouse you are sealed to (i.e., temple marriage). One thing the LDS church doesn't really talk about is that widowers and male divorcees can get remarried and sealed to another spouse. (i.e., they are still married in heave, therefore they will have more than one celestial spouse).

Widows and female divorcees cannot get sealed to someone else unless they have the original sealing of their first marriage broken (which is exceptionally difficult, even in cases of abuse, and could only happen to a divorcee, not if your devout Mormon spouse had died). Women can however get remarried and be seen in the eyes of the church as legally married, but they will not be married to that spouse in heaven (the same way the LDS church views all non-LDS --Buddhist, Catholic, atheist-- marriages).

So in your example, Johnny and Jane live on their planet together after Jane passes. Mark and Jane are recognized as married and not living in sin while alive, but they will not be celestially married since the church would not allow them to be sealed together. They would have married in a LDS church, not the temple.

Sam and Tanya would not be sealed together, so they would also not be together in heaven. 

[DaisyD]

Thank you Buzzard for that story. I knew I couldn't quite figure this all out, but I couldn't articulate what I didn't understand. 

Thank you nausicaa for explaining it.

[Buzzard]

So poor Mark is all alone and Sam and Tanya, who spend the most time together, never get to see eachother?  That seems sad!

 

[nausicaa]

6 minutes ago, Buzzard said:

So poor Mark is all alone and Sam and Tanya, who spend the most time together, never get to see eachother?  That seems sad!

 

Yeah, I've always wondered about poor Mormon women who are widowed exceptionally young after like six months of marriage and then go on to be married to their second husband for fifty years. 

I do wonder if it's very hard for them to get remarried, since LDS men would know they wouldn't get to be sealed to this wife in heaven and would prefer a temple marriage?

I'm not Mormon and wasn't raised as one, so I'd love to hear from someone who knows more about this culturally than I do.

[Buzzard]

Just now, nausicaa said:

Yeah, I've always wondered about poor Mormon women who are widowed exceptionally young and then go on to be married to their second husband for like fifty years. 

I do wonder if it's very hard for them to get remarried, since LDS men would know they wouldn't get to be sealed to this wife in heaven and would prefer a temple marriage. 

Where does the plural marriage come in? If I killed off all the women in my story and had one surviving male would he be able to continue to get re sealed?

[DaisyD]

If the man marries more than one woman that hasn't been previously sealed then he can get sealed to all of them and have more than one wife in heaven.

[nausicaa]

4 minutes ago, Buzzard said:

Where does the plural marriage come in? If I killed off all the women in my story and had one surviving male would he be able to continue to get re sealed?

So if BYU student Tom is married and sealed to BYU student Carla and Carla dies, then he gets married to virginal and never married Deborah, he can get sealed to her too. So he would have two wives in heaven.

Some LDS women have specific agreements with their husbands that the husband will not remarry if the wife dies first, so that first wife doesn't have to have a sister wife in heaven. 

I am not sure of this, but I also believe that devout LDS women who die never married are then sealed to men in the celestial kingdom. I'm assuming the husbands are men who are already married and inhabiting a planet with their earthly turned celestial wife? I could have this one wrong though.

[Buzzard]

4 minutes ago, nausicaa said:

I am not sure of this, but I also believe that devout LDS women who die never married are then sealed to men in the celestial kingdom. I'm assuming the husbands are men who are already married and inhabiting a planet with their earthly turned celestial wife? I could have this one wrong though.

Hopefully this is of their own choice!

[nausicaa]

3 minutes ago, Buzzard said:

Hopefully this is of their own choice!

I think the idea is that anyone inhabiting the celestial kingdom is so good and wise you would be ecstatic to be married to them. 

It's similar to what's told to divorced LDS couples--if your pain in the ass ex actually makes it there, he or she must have changed so much you would now love to be married to them and would get along wonderfully.

[samurai_sarah]

@Buzzard

The righteous men get the planets. As a woman, to my knowledge, you depend on your sealed husband to draw you through the veil into the celestial kingdom.

As a righteous woman, wed to a non-righteous man, you can still enter the highest kingdom of heaven. Either as a servant, or as the plural wife to a deserving man- after death. Agency doesn't stop after death, but for a woman, agency is limited.

That's my limited understanding.

[DaisyD]

Only men get planets is how I always understood it too. I have no idea if the mainstream church has changed this as I mostly follow the plygs. I know for them it's "keep sweet or your husband won't call your secret name to bring you through the veil".

[Buzzard]

On 7/28/2016 at 0:16 PM, samurai_sarah said:

@Buzzard

The righteous men get the planets. As a woman, to my knowledge, you depend on your sealed husband to draw you through the veil into the celestial kingdom.

As a righteous woman, wed to a non-righteous man, you can still enter the highest kingdom of heaven. Either as a servant, or as the plural wife to a deserving man- after death. Agency doesn't stop after death, but for a woman, agency is limited.

That's my limited understanding.

This is really more shocking to me than it should be considering how we deal with so many patriarchal based religions.   Its one thing to spend your earthly years dependent upon a headship, its a whole other idea to be told that you are "less than" in god's kingdom!

[nausicaa]

56 minutes ago, Buzzard said:

This is really more shocking to me than it should be considering how we deal with so many patriarchal based religions.   Its one thing to spend your earthly years dependent upon a headship, its a whole other idea to be told that you are "less than" in god's kingdom!

In the 19th century it was a popular belief that black Christians could make it to heaven--but they would be servants for the white people there. 

And to tie all this sexist and racist afterlife stuff together: Another controversy of the LDS church is that it has sealed "couples" together that included a female slave and a slave owner. (I believe Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings have been sealed together.)

[moreorlessnu]

On 7/27/2016 at 1:25 AM, NerdyHil said:

Okay, here's the low-down on baptisms for the dead: in theory it's supposed to help all of humanity receive access to have a chance at salvation. The names for the people who are baptized(and all the other temple bits) normally come from family history. That's why family history is such a big thing in the LDS church.  

Thank you.

This person keeps asking for "basic information" a dead relative, but won't actually articulate what that "basic information" is. From what I've read (and you mentioned too), they've even baptized holocaust victims. If they can baptize people they know virtually nothing about, what sort of "basic information" would they need?

[FundieFarmer]

On July 28, 2016 at 11:45 AM, nausicaa said:

Yeah, I've always wondered about poor Mormon women who are widowed exceptionally young after like six months of marriage and then go on to be married to their second husband for fifty years. 

I do wonder if it's very hard for them to get remarried, since LDS men would know they wouldn't get to be sealed to this wife in heaven and would prefer a temple marriage?

I'm not Mormon and wasn't raised as one, so I'd love to hear from someone who knows more about this culturally than I do.

You're so good at explaining this! Sheesh. There's so much bouncing around in my brain now.

[SpoonfulOSugar]

I think this is somewhat tangential to the question, but also helps highlight the various elements (and I didn't want to start a new thread);

http://www.sltrib.com/news/4076223-155/polygamous-towns-gradually-becoming-conventional-american

[Italiangirl]

I've found this article, maybe it could help http://www.gregtrimble.com/what-every-mormon-really-needs-to-know-about-polygamy/