Thank you so much for your insights, discussion and education these last months as we’ve all delved into BigLove.

I really appreciate your welcome and your thoughtful analyses!

“Of course the depiction of corrupt church officials seems more volatile to me than the fictionalized portrayal of a ceremony that I don’t believe in. I can relate to the negative ramifications of corruption more easily than the revelation of the endowment ceremony. But for a practicing member of the LDS church, I can absolutely understand why pulling back the curtain on something sacred would mean more than dissing some guy behind a fancy oak table. The Mormon leaders are merely human, so a stain on them is a stain on one person. The ceremony is holy, so a stain on it is like a stain on God.

Thinking about it this way, I feel sullied by what was shown. It’s the same way I felt when I saw a performance of a Native American tribal ritual as a teenager. Everyone is demeaned when something so powerful is put on display as entertainment. Or at least they are when the ritual is designed to be private. I don’t think it demeans Christianity, for instance, to show fictional Baptist preachers on television, because the ethos of Christianity is so often about creating public declarations of faith… of not keeping the “good news” to one’s self.

But from my understanding, that’s not how Mormons work. They’re not public worshippers, and so by forcing them to become public in this scene, Big Love may have crossed a line. Like my friend, I’m not sure there is any aesthetic achievement that can be worth so much hurt.

Sigh. ”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-blankenship/ibig-lovei-wife-watch-rou_b_175861.html

(223): The sacrament (communion) ceremony was pretty reasonable. Bill edited the traditional prayers on the bread and water together, which LDS people don’t do, but I’ve been to other Mormon services (for example, the Community of Christ) where they do both together. (Community of Christ also uses “wine” [actually grape juice] instead of “water”.)

The Hendricksons have always been independent fundamentalist Mormons, but in realizing he holds all the keys, Bill has taken a step toward organizing his own Mormon church.

-How do members of the LDS Church typically celebrate Communion? Was the portrayal borrowing from your traditions? Or completely fictionalized? (As a Catholic, the idea of chewing Communion almost knocked me off my couch!)

-It seems clear now that the Henricksons are off on their own version of faith, although I thought that was clear all along. They’ve simply articulated it.

-The show has also finally articulated that churches in all the forms expressed on the show are being used as an analogy for power and of the difficulty in identifying just power from unjust. (Roman was clearly identified as a false prophet, and Bill identified himself as a Prophet.) Power can be used to help or can be abused and cause immeasurable pain. I can see two sides to this: one, members of LDS may be horribly offended because the Church is depicted as one more corrupted power; and two, as raising questions about how power can be justly and respectfully used in order to perform greater service.

It seems likely that Bill will fail, given all the flaws he’s demonstrated over the course of the show and his own lust for power in and of itself. On one hand that can be a highly offensive idea, but on the other, it can illuminate the struggle that many people share in distinguishing their own wants and needs from the responsibilities of their faith.

@Nigel (154)-Thank you. I just worry that I may inadvertently offend due to limited knowledge!

@ephelba(162) -Excellent example! Not one that most Catholics will ever participate in, but you are correct!

@John-While I am glad that you felt my comments were helpful, I’m not sure that we are in complete agreement.

@ (couldn’t find the post, but it was regarding Under the Banner Of Heaven)- I read this book when it came out. The book seems to be very misunderstood. Granted, I haven’t re-read it since its release, but the premise of the book was to explore the ways in which fundamentalism often leads to violence. Early in the book the author explains why he wrote the book and that he could have chosen ANY religion’s fundamentalist sect to prove the point. It was not intended to be construed as an encyclopedic understanding of any one religion.

That said, I can certainly understand why it was offensive to many.

Years after reading the book, I have two main impressions:

1) I had no idea prior to reading it how instrumental Mormons were in settling the western regions of the US.

2) In the very last pages of the book, some interesting questions about how to reconcile faith with a modern world were raised.

I guess I may not have a point here, other than that I did not take the book to be an authority on LDS, and that it raised some interesting questions on faith in general in modern times.