By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

In early September I asked the ‘Nacle for some help in conceptualizing a youth fireside I had been asked to give. The actual fireside took place last night, so I thought I would give you a report.

My wife and I went over early to the bishop’s house for dinner (we also happen to be old friends). The missionaries were also there for the dinner part, and they gave a nice little message afterwards. Then people started coming, and the fireside itself started at 7:30.

The basic theme of the fireside was how to respond to questions people ask you about the Church. I began with a number of general suggestions:

- Try not to be overdefensive. Since we experienced persecution in our past, it’s easy for us to play the victim card and think someone is attacking us, even when they’re simply curious and asking about our beliefs and practices in good faith. I try to err on the side of assuming that people are sincere in their questions, even when inartfully worded or when a disagreement of some sort is implicit in the question.

- Saying “I don’t know” is always an appropriate answer (but better would be to add “but I’ll find out”). I told the kids how this was actually a motivating factor for me. When I went on my mission, I thought I pretty much knew all there was to know about the Church. But I quickly learned that answering big, grapefruit-sized softball questions from my teachers in their catechism-type lessons was a very different experience from answering genuine questions from skeptical investigators. I was saying “I don’t know” all the time, and while there is no shame in that, I was getting sick of it, so it was a motivation for me to learn more so that I could talk more intelligently about my faith.

- I told the kids that on church practice and culture and lifestyle type issues, between them and their friends they are the experts, and so they should be able to respond to those types of questions with confidence.

- I said that sometimes you can’t go right to answering a question, because it is based on a faulty premise or background assumption, and in that case you’ve got to correct the premise first.

- For some types of questions, you really can’t respond to them effectively without actual INFORMATION, so we talked a little bit about talking to others, including family and leaders, for ideas and using some basic resources on the internet.

At that point we began to brainstorm with respect to a list of questions the kids themselves had come up with the previous week. I knew there wouldn’t be time to cover all of them, but we did what we could in the time allotted. Below I’ll give you the full list of questions, and where I give a brief comment following the question, that is one that we actually discussed during the evening:

How do you explain wearing garments?

I suggested that sometimes using an analogy to something that is not LDS is the most effective approach. I like to compare the temple garment to the orthodox Jewish tallit, which is a kind of prayer shawl worn under one’s shirt, with tassels on each of its four corners to remind the wearer to obey the law and live righteously. That’s pretty much what a garment is. In contrast, I explained that I am not a fan of raising folkloric stories of physical protection from wearing garments. (I described a comic I saw at Sunstone last summer that shows a bishop holding a temple recommend interview for Superman, who is sitting across the desk from him. The bishop is saying “Do you wear the protective garment both night and day?” and Superman has a look on his face somewhere between bemusement and “this guy’s nuts!” It was pretty funny.)

Why can’t you date until you’re 16 years old?

I thought the youth could probably answer this question better than I could, so I asked them what they would say to this, and a couple said ” Because my parents won’t let me.” And I thought that was a good answer. Even though the Church pushes this as a policy, it is ultimately a parental decision, and it is not that out of the ordinary for our U.S. culture. (I also talked a little bit about bright line tests and how there is always a certain injustice at the margins; i.e., there are going to be 15-year olds who are sufficiently mature to date and 17-year olds who are really still too goofy to date. And I talked about different cultures where dating at this age isn’t even an issue, and also how our own culture has moved to where “hanging out” is the more common phenomenon, which is great right now but can become a problem later (hat tip to Julie’s comment on my prior thread.))

Why don’t you wear tank tops and shorter shorts?

When do you highlight scriptures?

Here I talked about the ambiguity of the pronoun “you.” Is this a question directed to the person, or is the you meant to be general for “Mormons?” My initial inclination would be to take it as addressed to me as a person, rather than looking for some common or ideal answer. So I told them quite frankly that when I was their age I never marked scriptures. I found that I had to as a missionary so that I could find things again and just for my own survival, but after my mission the Church came out with the new edition of scriptures and I’ve never felt the need to mark scriptures since (my scriptures are pristine). Having gone through the exercise completely once, I found that I could pretty easily find whatever I was looking for.

The bishop contributed to these discussions along the way, and he made a good point that another ambiguity in the question could be that it was meant to be why do you mark scriptures, since in some religious cultures such a practice would be viewed as offensive. I agreed and pointed out that we tend to take a more pragmatic view of such things.

What do you do at the temple?

Again, this question invites a bit of parsing: does it mean you specifically or Mormons generally? My first read would be to take it as specific, which in the case of the youth means baptisms for the dead. Repeatedly throughout the evening I stressed that you have to avoid using technical Mormon terminology and “translate” it to common wording others could understand (promises in lieu of covenants, in the case of garments symbols in lieu of marks, that sort of thing). Anyway, the bishop wisely pointed out that you probably shouldn’t even call it “baptism for the dead,” because people will immediately get the idea we’re dunking cadavers. Instead, use an entire sentence to explain the process rather than using our technical term.

If they are really asking the question more generally about what Mormons do in the temple, the youth are operating under a couple of handicaps in responding, in that they don’t have personal knowledge and we are reticent to talk about the temple in any detail. But I gave them how I would respond to such a question. I would say it is a ritual drama–like a passion play–about the creation of the world, during the course of which we make several religious promises to live righteous lives. The bishop pointed out that people really just want assurance we aren’t doing something weird or satanic or sacrificing goats or something like that in there.

How did we find the Bible, and who found it?

I used this as an example of needing to correct a mistaken background assumption before addressing the acutal question, since the Bible was not originally a book. We tend to think of biblia as a Latin feminine singular, but in reality it is a Greek neuter plural, and means “books,” which are organized in a certain fashion, making the Bible a religious library. Its books circulated independently until the technological innovation of the codex and the establishment of the canon in the 4th century A.D. (that took some explanation for the kids) made it possible to start binding these books together and think of it as a single book.

What do you believe in? (There are so many answers, what do I say?)
What is different about your church?

I said this was a great question, which I could relate to, because when I was a law clerk after my second year of law school the other clerk in my office asked me over lunch one day “What’s it like to be Mormon?” And I was so overwhelmed by the question my mind pretty much went blank. (I think I mumbled some stuff about orthopraxis and lay leadership and it being a seven-days a week faith, but I think I was mostly incoherent on the spot like that.)

I suggested that the questioner likely isn’t looking for an exhaustive dissertation, but for just a taste. So I suggested giving one belief you hold in common with the person to establish some common ground and then one belief that is different to show some contrast. For example, we’re Christians and believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, was born into this mortality and ministered and was crucified, died and the third day rose again, and atoned for our sins. But we also believe in continuing revelation and that we have prophets today just as they did in ancient times.

The bishop added a great thought, that you can just sort of paraphrase (not quote) some of the articles of faith.

How many wives can you have?
How do I explain polygamy in relation with our church?

Are you from Utah?

This one illustrated first, not being over defensive (it’s a simple factual question you can just answer), and second, looking at the underlying premise of the question (not all Mormons come from Utah).

Is it true you can’t have coffee? What about Coke?

There’s a simple, straightforward answer, which is yes, no. But you can certainly go into more detail on the history of this proscription, and we talked about that for a while.

If A2 + B2 = C2 then when can we crazy Mormons use the priesthood like the Force?

Do you get your own planet?

Why is your church so obsessed with sending out missionaries for two whole years?

Are Mormons Christian?

Why can’t you do things on Sunday?
Why can’t you play volleyball on Sunday?

What is Mormonism?

What is this thing called Seminary?

How the heck are you a priest/deacon/teacher at your church?

I used this one as an illustration of a question you need actual information to answer. You could go to church for a hundred years and still not know the answer to this; you need an actual resource to respond effectively. I told the kids about Bill Hartley’s JMH article “From Men to Boys” and summarized his conclusions for them.

Why don’t you ever swear?

When was the church built? How old is the church?

Why did we practice polygamy, then stop? How do we explain that to others?

Why would we get up so early every day to go to Church?

People ask about or if I try to explain about ours prophets, I need help to elaborate.

Why don’t women hold the priesthood?

All in all, it went very well and I think it was a great success. (Those kids are lucky to have that particular bishop, who in the universe of LDS bishops has to be in the 99.9th percentile for coolness. He’s the kind of guy teenagers can really look up to as a role model.)