DanceLessons

Abner Kneeland and Joseph Smith

A couple of weeks ago I gave a sermon titled “Marching off the Map: Uncharted Territory” - my faith journey from Mormonism to Unitarian Universalism. Preparation renewed my enthusiasm for a thwarted dream of writing a book that interweaves my personal transition, depression, fundamentalism, and congregational growth. Even I never succeed in publishing a book, I will at least leave my children some way to make sense out of their mother’s life of paradox and contradictions.

The other night, my husband and I were watching PBS when someone made a reference to no hell. I turned to him and said ‘that is Universalism’. To which he responded, Mormons don’t believe in hell either.

This discussion which led me to Google Mormonism and Universalism, eventually finding Philocrite’s blog of May 20, 2004:

How Universalist is Mormon theology?

I'm making my way through Richard Bushman's new biography, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. In writing the story leading up to the First Vision, Bushman tells us about the Prophets forebears. "Grandfather Smith had been a Congregationalist, a leading townsman, a man of property. Asael broke those religious moorings as surely as he left the family's farm. He was drawn to Universalism, read Tom Paine, and repudiated evangelical religion. Joseph Sr. was even more adrift. In the first generation, Asael experimented; in the second, Joseph Sr. was lost." (p. 26) . One of the marvels of theology is that a Universalist doctrine of salvation can effectively relapse into the psychology of Puritanism, as it has in orthodox Mormonism with its emphasis on right behavior.

Another hour of Googling brought me these historical nuggets connecting Universalism and Mormonism:

• Joseph Smith rented and then preached at the Universalist Church at Fourth and Lombard Streets in Philadelphia. [ ]
• This was Universalist Abner Kneeland’s church at the time.
• Abner Kneeland and Joseph Smith both engaged in seeking ancient documents and artifacts by the use of seerstones and psychic assistance.
• The ______Sunday Morning News, of Nov. 15, reads Abner Kneeland, the notorious leader of the infidels in Boston, has been convicted of blasphemy before the supreme court of Mass. We cannot suggest a better course for the gray headed scoundrel than that he forthwith take up his line of march for the land of the Mormons, and associate himself with his brother imposter.
• Kneeland established a utopian community in Iowa which failed.
• Brigham Young quoted Abner Kneeland on June 18, 1865.
  Abner Kneeland, who was a citizen of Boston, and who was put into prison for his belief, in an essay which he wrote, made this broad assertion: "Instead of believing there is no God, I believe that all is God." Young went on to say: It is supposed by a certain celebrated philosopher that the most minute particles of matter which float in space, in the waters, or that exist in the solid earth, particles which defy the most powerful glasses to reveal them to the vision of finite man, possess a portion of divinity, a portion of infinite power, knowledge, goodness and truth, and that these qualities are God, and should be worshipped wherever found. I am an infidel to this doctrine.

Makes me wonder what might have been if Abner Kneeland had founded a church and established a thriving colony in Iowa. Can you imagine?

Armed Resistance, Martin Luther King and Anti Racism

I’m on my third book on armed resistance in the South between 1950 and 1970:  Deacons for Defense; Robert Williams: Radio Free Dixie and The Blood Done Sign my Name.  What started out with some background reading on the history of my new home state of North Carolina has turned into almost obsession to understand the complexity of the civil rights movement and the impact of violence in anti-racism.

I’ve heard many Martin Luther King sermons but no mention of Robert Williams, a member of the Monroe NC Unitarian Fellowship in the 1950’s.  He practiced and preached armed resistance and eventually fled to Cuba.  The NAACP cancelled his membership. The SCL disparaged him.

I’ve participated in anti-racism workshops but nothing helped me understand racism and white privilege like the last chapter in ‘The Blood Done Sign My Name’.

I feel really ignorant and naïve.  Maybe that is why I am obsessed with seeking greater understanding.  I also am worried.  When I was in the first grade in Boise, my teacher wrote my mother a note reporting that I was holding hands with a little “colored boy”. I think we kissed but that may be my mother’s tendency for exaggeration. I always thought the point to the story was that I didn’t even notice his skin color.  Now I wonder what happened to that little “colored boy”.  What did the teacher say to him?  For me it is a nice little story – but is there a more painful racist version?