Author: Walter van Beek

Over a month ago, I was asked by the Salt Lake Tribune what a reelection of Donald Trump would imply for the International Church. The reasoning of the journalist was that Trump’s performance as President of the United States, especially his handling of the covid-19 pandemic, was severely damaging not only his status in the world but also of the USA as a nation and world leader. Consequently, was the reasoning, conversion to a church that is primarily seen as a USA church, would be hampered. The Utrecht Ward in 2000 My reaction at the time—when reelection was still possible—was that 1. The moral status of the USA has already been suffering over a long time; 2. Indeed Trump’s administration had done great harm to it; 3. In our eyes the notions of ‘manifest destiny’ and ‘American exceptionalism’ have little meaning other than a self-congratulatory discourse. The fact that the Book of Mormon situates itself in the Americas is important, but that seems to be mainly in Mexico and Guatemala, countries on which I hear little in terms of ‘destiny’, manifest or other. But it is hard to see how the Church could have be established as it is anywhere else but in the US of A. The association between the USA and the Church is still strong, and the attraction of the Church in many countries in the world, does rely for a considerable part on the appeal of…

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It is a week after Easter now, and surely Petrus (Peter, the English call him, but I prefer his more apostolic sounding Latin name) has come back from his great shock, delivered by the rooster; that early morning crowing did put him back with his feet on the ground: he had showed weak when confronted with reality. Of course, he had regretted it deeply, but in the last week he has seen his risen Lord and things were turning out gloriously. Pentecost is still six weeks into the future, with its redemption by the Holy Spirit and we all know that from that moment onwards Petrus would never falter in his faith. I think he has never forgotten that particular rooster, which revealed that even the ones closest to the Lord could and did make mistakes. That animal cry embodied a reality check, a revelation from below, a call for correction of a mistake. And it worked, in Petrus’ life. Petrus’ real example is that he learned from being corrected and grew: he learned from the rooster. Well, the analogy is clear, we may get messages from above, but we are corrected from below, even sometimes doing the correcting. The last General Conference did not bring a large harvest of changes, but it did provide one major correction, in the treatment of the children of gay couples. This policy, called the PoX in the blogosphere, has been corrected now, in…

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In his recent world tour President Russell Nelson visited Kenya and spoke about a specific cultural custom in Kenya, the bridewealth or bride price. President Nelson called it ‘dowry’, which is technically incorrect, but that is not the issue I want to raise here. Bridewealth consists of the valuables that are transferred from the family of the groom the father of the bride, as a compensation for the loss of a woman. Dowry are the valuables a bride takes with her into her married state, often part of her inheritance, to be used by her and/or her husband. African marriages, throughout, are bridewealth marriages: one ‘pays’ for a bride. While lauding the Africans for their family orientation, Nelson denounced the custom of bridewealth, arguing that it does not square with the practice of the gospel; in fact Dallin Oaks had done so before him in a talk about gospel culture. One major reason for raising the issue of bridewealth payments, is that it puts a heavy burden on the young men who need many years to get all the cows and money needed for such a transaction, before they can settle down with a family. That not only tends to postpone their marriage, but also precludes them from going on a mission, and one can understand why both church leaders frowned on the custom. So the advice to the Kenyan members was not to follow the custom and marry without…

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This post is about ritual, not doctrine, so it is about the form of worship, not its theology. I will use the word ‘ritual’ for all formalized forms of worship, Mormon and other, even if we use ‘ordinances’ in our own ‘Mormonese’, but ‘ritual’ is the generally accepted term. Rituals are important since as symbols in action they are ‘sticks to lean on in worship’. In the Mormon church we have quite some rituals, like the sacrament, prayers, testimony bearing, baptism, laying on of hands, administering, and of course the temple is a house full of rituals. My thesis in this first blog on wedding and marriage is that in our LDS ritual repertoire, large as it may be, we are missing one ritual, the wedding. Now, let me be clear: I use ‘wedding’ for the ritual (or ceremony, but that is the same category) by which a couple is married. Marriage is the institution, wedding the specific form this festive occasion takes, a form which depends on culture and tradition. And on the Church. All cultures know the institution of marriage, but not all cultures have weddings; sometimes the joining of a man and a woman occurs very gradually. But anyway, when a man and woman are married, they form a new group in society: they have gone from their ‘family of orientation (living with mon and dad) to their ‘family of procreation’, and henceforth the children of the…

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It is about ten months ago now, that Sad Sunday when the ‘Exclusion Policy’ was upon us, the one that created a lot of problems, while solving probably none. In our ward we lost our bishop through it, and he still has not returned. Also, some of the Primary kids still have not been baptized, as some still wait for the exclusion policy to be revoked. There is ample reason for such a repeal; after all, as I analysed last year, the policy of excluding children of same sex parents from a normal entrance into our community does not really address anyone in practice, whereas it does send a signal of exclusion into the world. And into the Church. It is the wrong arena, the wrong battle, the wrong fight. Yet, a retraction is unlikely to happen for several reasons. In any formal organization, not just the Church, reversing a decision is much harder than taking one, as it erodes the authority of the leadership and ultimately undermines the organization itself. When presiding over an international sport federation, I had exactly the same problem: how to come back on mistakes without creating a lot of confusion in the organization, or losing too much political clout? I did make mistakes, and most I had to ‘suffer out’, only a few I could correct. In our church this issue is compounded by the mist of infallibility that hovers around our leaders, the…

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The man who killed our former Secretary of Health, dr. Borst (see my last blog), will be institutionalized with mandatory psychiatric treatment, for a period as long as is deemed necessary by the experts, till they deem him no longer a threat to society. The judges opined that he was completely unaccountable, living in a totally parallel world. He had set out to kill his sister, and then ‘God told him’ on the spot to kill dr. Borst; he killed his sister later. The prosecution had demanded 8 years in prison first and then institutionalization, and considers to appeal the verdict. Anyway, in our day and age the ‘call of Abraham’ is judged as insanity, so let us return to the Genesis story, for a third angle on what I consider one of the most dangerous tales in the Script. In my first blog I treated the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac more or less in the way that the Bible presents it, as a test. I argued that the Scriptures may laud Abraham for his obedience (and not just in Genesis), yet on the other hand offer more than enough arguments for the opposite verdict: that Abraham in fact failed the test; viz. Abraham should have used all he knew about God to fight the command to sacrifice. The Book of Abraham does just the same: while hailing his obedience Joseph added reasons why God’s demand for Isaac’s…

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Right now in the Netherlands a man stands trial for the murder of former Health Secretary, Els Borst. The culprit has confessed, stating in his defence that God commanded him to kill dr. Borst as she was responsible for the new euthanasia laws. The immediate reaction of the Dutch public is that he is insane; also the court does not take his claim seriously. Now, such a claim in a murder case is rather new for the Netherlands, but in the USA this kind of delusion may sound familiar, like in attacks on abortion clinics. Claims on God’s command can be used for all purposes, also the most nefarious. The interpretation of a story’s message depends on who is telling it and what is the hidden agenda of the story teller. In my earlier blog we were wondering about Abraham’s intended sacrifice of his son, our basic conundrum, and now let us view Abraham not as a historical person but as a legendary figure about whom tales are told. Who tells the tale in Genesis 22 and to what end? According to the Documentary Hypotheses, Genesis stems from four sources: the Elohist (E), the Jahwist (J), the Deuteronomist (D), and the youngest one (P), the Priestly source, which is postexilic. The general notion of multiple authorship of the Torah is almost standard these days, and does throw new light upon our Abraham problem. Abraham’s life is a mix of J…

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At the moment I am teaching a course on ‘Religion and Violence’ for Leiden University in the Netherlands. The topic is all too obvious these days, especially after the last brutal terrorist attacks in Brussels. As a text we use Karen Armstrong’s Fields of Blood. Religion and the History of Violence, a book in which she in fact defends the right of existence of religion as such, a defence which is called for indeed. All through the western world, religion sits in the dock, accused of instigating violence, and by increasing popular consent is found guilty as charged. Would the world be better off without religion? The question was raised during Enlightenment and but now roams larger, wider and much louder. Increasingly the answer is a resounding ‘yes!’. Of course this is triggered by excesses, such as we just suffered in Brussels. Forgotten for the moment the manifold contributions to our society and to western civilization by Christianity; or by Islam to the Moslem as well as the Western world, for that matter. But all religions are under scrutiny, especially ‘strong religions’, as Scott and Appleby call them, high-investment religions with clear and strong claims. Such as ours. Here I do not want to delve into Mormon history – not without its violent episodes – but into a much more fundamental issue, one we share as Christians with Jews and Moslems: the legacy of Abraham. So let us have a…

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The supreme court has decided, so now in all of the USA same sex marriages are legal. With this landmark decision the USA has joined the many nations in the world where such a union has become official, and from the Netherlands, the first country where these marriages became official, we extend a warm welcome to America. Great that you joined the swelling crowd who thinks that LGTB should not be discriminated against, also not in marriage issues. You are becoming a ‘modern nation’ now (I hope you recognize a European ‘tongue-in-cheek’). In an earlier blog I explained how preciously little impact this SSM issue has had on the members, wards and stakes in the International Church. i.e. in the largest part of the LDS Church, a notion repeated by many bloggers and commentaries. That means that the recent church statement has very little bearing on the situation outside the USA and will raise questions and eyebrows when read in the International Church. As Wilfried Decoo showed in his blog, the official standpoint of the Church, when brought without adaptation, is awkward for us. Our experiences in Europe are clear: this is a marginal issue, so we are happy to see this US debate resolved in favor of gay marriage. The backlash of Proposition 8 has reverberated even across the Atlantic. Some battles are better lost – and LDS history has shown a few of these. The important thing is…

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In studying the last days of Jesus, like in lesson 26 of Gospel Doctrine, we habitually view the complicated chain of events that led to Jesus’ death from the viewpoint of the victim, with the dominant party furnishing the bad guys, the culprits of the story. Evidently, the Jewish authorities are prime suspects, but throughout Christian history one specific player has had a very bad press, Pontius Pilate. Most Christians have at least partly blamed him for the crucifixion, pointing either at his ruthlessness or at his presumed lack of spine, or even both. That, however, is the view from below. Let us now have a look from ‘above’, and see the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate in action as a colonial administrator. For me as a Dutchman, living in a country which has a – both lamented and glorified – colonial past, such a view might be closer than for an American. After all, Indonesia and West Papua once were Dutch colonies. And the insights I cite here stem from an anthropologist, my teacher Jan van Baal, who had a glorious colonial career as the before-last governor of New Guinea. So here is the story of Pilate and Jesus from a colonial viewpoint. The gospels indicate that Pilate was not by chance in Jerusalem; based in Caesarea, for this particular Passover he had taken his wife to the capital, always a ruler’s sign of confidence and courtesy. It was the…

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The horrendous attack on Charlie Hebdo last Wednesday has shocked the world. This is beyond humanity, and all reactions, also from the Muslim communities, is one of deep anger and clear condemnation. Everywhere this murderous spree is seen as an attack on a core value in modern free society, the freedom of the press. Whoever attacks the free press, attacks democracy and free society, so whoever attacks a free press in fact attacks us, all of us, none excluded. Throughout Europe, people flocked to the large squares, expressing their revulsion for this brutal massacre, voicing their conviction that this is not to be tolerated. Thus, the ever so divided Europe unites in one voice, that we are all Charlie. The target, Charlie Hebdo, is a satirical magazine which by definition is iconoclast. It choses provocation, not dialogue, trying to shock, not to gloss over. Their humor is not mine, and their policy is not the one I advocate to bridge the deep divisions in our society, but it is an option that is open in our society. And it should be open, in a free democracy. What you can do, does not necessarily dictate what you want to do or should do, but the principle of free expression has to stand inviolate. Any comparison of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo with other attempts to muzzle the press is slightly insulting, as this terrorist act is of an unheard-of brutality. But…

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Who really killed Goliath? Of course, this is the most stupid question possible. After all, this is one of the most advertised killings in the history of the world, its record read by millions of admiring people, glorifying in the victory of the brave and smart reddish boy over the Big Ugly Brute. Add the pious invocation of Jahweh throughout the battle, and one has the making of an inspiring heroic story, and that is precisely how it functions in the Old Testament. All the kids in Primary know exactly who killed Goliath, and can explain in detail how he did it, with his sling and a few pebbles. Reading the story in I Samuel as a military history one can understand how David came to be a great army leader, for the chapter defines him as a smart soldier. Goliath is the quintessential massive warrior, “whose height was six cubits and a span” (1 Sam 17:4) (KJV); 6 cubits and a span would put him at 2.85 meter (yes, we all are metric by now). Well, most measures, figures and numbers in the Old Testament cannot be trusted, but Goliath surely was huge. The Dead Sea Scroll text, probably earlier than the Masoretic text, puts him at “4 cubit and a span,” just over 2 meter; more probable, yet still large at those times. So in the re-telling at the campfires he grew two cubits. And was he heavy.…

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The French president Francois Hollande is convening an international conference with the countries around Nigeria on the question how to deal with Boko Haram, Michelle Obama addressed the USA on the plight of the abducted schoolgirls: all through the western world the media react to this incident in North Nigeria. Last Saturday I gave an interview on Boko Haram for the national Dutch radio: the media have ‘discovered’ Boko Haram, and so have international politics. Of course the furor is completely justified, especially when the leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, announced that he would sell the girls, either as prostitutes, forced brides or slaves. But, as always, there is a history to this, and maybe a moral. So I want to raise two questions here: how could this happen – the history of this brutal violence – and why do we react as we do at this very junction of time? And maybe a third question: how do we deal with this most vicious aspect of ‘the world’? A major study on Boko Haram, published by the African Studies Centre, Leiden, Netherlands. History first, very short, with my own involvement. As an anthropologist I have been researching the Kapsiki/Higi for over four decades now; the group I study is called Higi in Nigeria and Kapsiki in Cameroon, and lives in the Mandara Mountains 300 km. south of Lake Tchad, at both sides of the border between the two countries.…

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