Time: Saturday, March 13, 1:00 p.m.
Location: South Assembly room
Moderator: Eric A. Eliason
Presenters:
- 1:00 Duane Boyce, independent scholar, Utah
Nibley’s Two Views of War
- 1:30 Kenneth L. Alford, Brigham Young University
Latter-day Saints in Wartime Afghanistan
- 1:55 David Pulsipher, Brigham Young University-Idaho
“Prepared to Abide the Penalty: The Latter-day Saints and Civil Disobedience
- 2:25 Alan F. Keele, Brigham Young University
“We Are a Warlike People”: President Kimball’s Sobering Assessment Illuminated by the Case of the Mormons in the Third Reich
Duane Boyce
Nibley's Two Views on War
Boyce tackles a deep topic by trying to analyze Nibley’s belief on war. He believes that Nibley’s beliefs changed over the course of his lifetime. He started by believing the theory that “war is a necessary evil” and its okay to go in your defense. Then by the end of his life, war was more of just an “evil.” And Nibley may have been a pacifist. These beliefs were sparked in Boyce after speaking with Nibley’s biographer and in response to Boyce’s question about Nibley’s view, “Is there a point where war is justified?” The answer came, “The Hugh Nibley of today doesn’t think so.”
Boyce looked through Nibley’s writings and determined that the only evidence given that his view point had changed from agreeing with war for defense and becoming a pacifist, lay in these six arguments:
1. Book of Mormon wars were always between bad guys and other bad guys.
2. The Ammonites were the best people in the Book of Mormon and they were pacifists.
3. It is perverse, even Orwellian, to think of war as a means for achieving peace.
4. It is perverse to proclaim “who does not take up the sword shall perish by the sword.”
5. The Nephites would have faced no wars if they had been righteous.
6. God himself fights the battles of the righteous
However, when Boyce went through each one, he found none of them to stand up. He found proof in the scriptures against each one. Therefore, he concludes that if Nibley was a pacifist (not saying that pacifism is a bad reaction to war) these couldn’t have been the reasons and Nibley may have had opinions that weren’t recorded.
Kenneth L. Alford
The Church in Afghanistan
President Benson said the time that “peace shall be taken from the earth” is the time we live in now. The world of the 21st Century has not knows a week without war.
We entered Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 and this war has now lasted twice as long as WWII.
Soon after arriving in Afghanistan the Latter-day Saint soldiers would form service groups on their own, seeking each other out to hold church services. This sparked the church to recognize a needed change in this area. It is in an Islamic country for the first time ever as well as being organized into districts for the first time in a war zone.
Alford then highlighted some of the inspiring stories from the soldiers at church:
Major Steve Larsen: There were no working water pumps and as an engineer he was asked to solve the problem. The pumps were Russian and wouldn’t work after normal wiring. After a quick prayer he remembered a lecture from college, enlightening him that Russian wiring was exactly opposite. They still use those pipes for water today.
Corporal Alexandro Rangel: He was the first baptism in Afghanistan (a member of a deployed unit). They needed white clothing for the baptism and a Catholic chaplain offered up two cleric uniforms.
Captain Jon Petty: He spoke how during their thirty-minute sacrament meetings they always had food. Now, in coming back, he says, “the kid’s Cheerios just don’t cut it.”
Church members are highly involved with service projects including donating money to schools and orphanages as well as providing supplies.
There are now five branches in Afghanistan. In the beginning there were 300 members and they’ve grown to 800 members. Through trends, they predict that there will be 1300 by end of year. They have an active duty “combat” Relief Society president. Another great part is their extension of home teaching called “Mormon Battle Program” where each member soldier has another member of the church that keeps track of them.
David Pulsipher
Civil Disobedience
“From 1862, when plural marriage was first declared illegal in Utah Territory, until 1890, when church leaders officially abandoned the practice—the Latter-day Saint people consciously and publicly defied what they considered to be an unconstitutional series of laws.”
This encompasses Pulsipher’s presentation which states that the LDS at that time were participating in civil disobedience. John Taylor gave a pertinent speech describing how Mormons need to obey the laws of the land as well as the laws of God. But when they were put in a situation where they couldn’t do both they each had to make a decision, and many paid for it by serving time in jail.
Latter-day Saints are generally not recognized by the public for participating in civil disobedience, and no one tries to correct them. But concerning the strict definition of civil disobedience, “conscious and open defiance of a specific law and trying to change that law,” Mormons at that time would fit. But soon the term had become skewed and was applied to situations where laws were being blatantly broken and not always peacefully.
But to analyze the situation more fully, Pulsipher decided that there were three things that set Mormon civil disobedience apart from the others.
1. Founded in theory of just and unjust laws
2. Conscientious, Public and Nonviolent
3. Maintains fidelity to the Rule of Law
Alan F. Keele
We Are a Warlike People
President Kimball spoke “we are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord… [we must] carry the gospel to our enemies, that they might no longer be our enemies.”
(To learn more about the topics of Keele’s presentation you can read BYU Studies, “War and Peace,” Volume 25 number 1).
After the end of the Cold War Russia needed help getting through their first winter. BYU headed a foundation to donate to the people. During the expansion of this effort German church members were seen “loading trucks with food and clothing for the people of Leningrad, the very city which German troops famously besieged for 900 days during World War Two, causing widespread starvation.”
Not all stories are so profound in the turn around that Mormons can make. This is illustrated in the tragic story of Helmuth Hübener whose attempts included civil disobedience and never called for Hitler’s assassination, but he was none-the-less murdered for his resistance against the Third Reich. And the whole time his fellow ward members showed hate towards him for his resistance against the government. But we learned that “even very young people, armed with good information, can see through the lies…. of propaganda”
Hitler allowed citizens to have a “national pride” which was not easy for them to give up. “We’d like to think Mormons didn’t make bad political choices” but H. L Mencken said, “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his income depends on his not understanding it.”
Then as President Bush declared a war on terror, Americans “resoundingly threw their support behind the idea of an everlasting global war on terror at all costs.” It is hard to know what the right reaction to these situations is.
“Mormons again face and will probably always face new temptations to be a warlike people when new enemies rise up and new threats want to make us anti-enemy instead of pro-kingdom of God.”
