I have met and still
know a number of superb poets and prose writers who are former Mormons.
Catholicism and Protestantism are very much older than Mormonism, and one
should note the massive influence Christianity had on European culture, and the
longevity and resilience of its imprint. A writer or poet, whether believer or
some form of alienated and rambunctious free thinker, couldn't but have their
moral, philosophical and aesthetic precepts formed somehow by the daily
pervasiveness of theological thinking; in any event, poets and writers and
playwrights and artists of all sorts were able to find nuance, exceptions,
ironies, tension within the Church's thinking.
It was generations of artists attempting to resolve the
conflict between what they were socialized to accept and a suppressed desire to
believe and do otherwise. One can cite their own examples here, but suffice it
to say that some sought reconciliation between the desire to rebel and a need
to believe in more mystical infrastructure, while others wandered off toward
spiritual beliefs more accommodating of a free spirit, and still others
rejected an afterlife and its laws altogether.
This conflict follows us to the New World, where it morphed
into something else all together, hence another discussion. Mormonism, a young
religion founded only in the 1820s, is not in an historical position to have
its writers struggle with their belief system with the result being a species
of arguably great art; Mormonism, in fact, seems more a parody of basic
Christian catechism than anything else.
The same may be said of Scientology, a
legitimate religion, I suppose, but one whose tenets of faith seem more the
subject of bad science fiction writing. Christianity, of course, was a
mirroring of Greek and Roman mythology, with a vast reduction of gods and
demigods, of course. I suppose it's only the natural progression of things that
so much contemporary spiritual thinking seems inspired by dog eared paperbacks
one finds in damp boxes on garage shelves or in bookstores where dust mites and
mildew rule the roost.
The same may be said of Scientology, a
legitimate religion, I suppose, but one whose tenets of faith seem more the
subject of bad science fiction writing. Christianity, of course, was a
mirroring of Greek and Roman mythology, with a vast reduction of gods and
demigods, of course. I suppose it's only the natural progression of things that
so much contemporary spiritual thinking seems inspired by dog eared paperbacks
one finds in damp boxes on garage shelves or in bookstores where dust mites and
mildew rule the roost.
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