mormon masculinity: a soldier for Jesus
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the whole armor of God
I will try to do something that I have been planning on doing for a long time, but only today – after having attended a seminar on theological reflections around masculinity – I think that I might have the tools to do so. Be patient with me, because I have many thoughts on the issue and there is only so much one can write in one article. Everyone remembers “the whole armor of God” video from LDS seminar classes. If you haven’t seen it, the video’s two first parts are embedded in this post. Let me first discuss aspects of the video content:
1. First the ‘soldiers’ in the movie are armored with armors apparently from Roman times. Although, esthetically it makes sense to use the clothes and armors of Roman soldiers, they are the same uniforms used in the video “the Lamb of God” by the soldiers who torture Jesus. In addition, it makes the implication, for those who know the end of the movie – when the valiant ‘soldier’ walks down in the air-bridge to leave on his mission – that as a man, you become part of a great army of fighters building/defending an empire, or at least a kingdom.
2. Temptation is represented by the ‘darts of the adversary’ with fighters that are cloaked in black and armed with bow and arrows. But only when the young man who should be preparing for his mission accepts a beer from the girl that he likes (the seducing temptress in this case) and follows her into what must be a private room, the unarmed soldier, representative of the young man, is hit by an arrow in the back. After a violent fight between the young soldiers and the evil fighters, those among the young men who did no longer have their armors on were killed or heavily maimed, and those who had kept them on survived.
3. A video clip of Gordon B. Hinckley, the then-first councilor in the First Presidency, describes the war between good and evil as such: “when God has had a people on the earth, it matters not in what age, Lucifer and the millions of fallen spirits that were cast out of heaven have warred against God, against Christ, against the work of God and against the people of God. The war goes on. It is waged in our own lives, day in and day out, in our homes, in our work, in our schools and associations. It is waged over questions of love and respect, of loyalty and fidelity, of obedience and integrity. The victims who fall are as precious as those who have fallen in the past. It is an ongoing battle”, upon which the young man is seen with his bishop explaining that others make it seem so easy to repent and is also seen not taking part of the sacrament, implying that he had committed a ‘sin’ of which he had not yet repented.
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4. One of the ‘valiant’ young ladies – notice how none of the young soldiers in the forest were girls – is seen reading her scriptures, and her younger brother comes running with his friends in child’s play wearing military uniforms, screaming and shouting, explains that being under a positive influence, she did not feel like shouting at them and demonstrated patience and love. Perhaps I am over analyzing this, but the message is that if your younger brother wants to play soldier, there is no harm in that? At least, there is a greater virtue in not being upset, than to challenge the ‘boys’ from running around, pointing guns at each other and play war – because war is implicitly moral?
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defensive war against evil
There are several topics here: One is of the warrior/war theology of the LDS Gospel. The other is the gender roles attributed implicitly in the movie, where men go on missions and where the woman is the seducing temptress, although there is a valiant girl among the peer group to weigh up for the female seducer (Potifar’s wife?). The third is about empire-building and the LDS Church implying it is literally the Kingdom of God (or empire) and that the vast ‘armies’ of the priesthood are “engaged today in the fight with evil”.
Notice however that this is a defensive war – at least in the movie and otherwise in life. My reflection is that one does not actively go out of one’s way to ‘attack’ the enemy offensively, as the enemy is implicitly untouchable or at least invisible to the naked eye – lurking behind a tree in the spiritual jungles of our lives ready to shoot at any occasion. I question the usefulness of the war analogy in American modern society, already heavily militarized and sex-obsessed.
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muscular mormon
David Knowlton in his Sunstone article explains the following on the duality between American images of masculinity and Mormon masculinity: ”And though there are many American discourses on masculinity – including Mormonism’s – there are a number of common themes that infuse our minds because we have all learned about and interacted with the stereotype they comprise. We find these in American movies, television, and literature. Guy Corneau writes, “As I explored the theme of masculine identity with a group of men, it became apparent to me that each one of us was grappling with a model of masculinity that he could not live up to. They will take the forms of mythic characters such as Superman, Rambo and the Incredible Hulk”.
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Are we replacing those American mythical male super-heroes with our own Book of Mormon spiritual and (violent) giants, such as Ammon fighting off the robbers by slashing their arms, Mormon and Moroni leading the Nephite armies into battle as young generals, a muscular Nephi confronting his brothers because of their murmuring, the 2000 young stripling warriors who responded the call to fight when their families were threatened: MEN (with capital letters) who did not shy from using violence as and when ‘dictated by God’ (or not). The question must however be, when does God dictate and justify the use of violence? There is a moral issue at stake.
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sexuality of the mormon male
Furthermore, David Knowlton talks of the sexuality of the Mormon male in his article, which is somewhat relevant to the movie: ”Everywhere men are surrounded by images of male virility, everywhere sexual representations are suffused with the power of the phallus. It should not surprise us, therefore that we unconsciously symbolize male virility in the Church office building. It rises, like a powerful, towering phallus, from a nest of two smaller, rounder buildings. Although this association suggests an unreflected and unproblematic relationship among Church authority around masculinity and sexuality, in reality we find crucial structural tensions right in the middle of this powerful biological drive connected with our sense of ourselves as men and our relationship with Church authority”.
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“As adults we learn and fear the sudden death aspect of “improper” sex since it will trigger Church authorities to punish us, possibly cutting us off from the body of the Church and from our families and friends. We learn to feel ambivalent about our penises. The penis is a symbol of male power and our own masculinity, yet it can fail us in sex, and it can cause us to be ostracized from the kingdom”.
“As we seek the purity and spirituality desired by the gospel, we enter into powerful conflict with our libidos and our sense of manhood, given the way [the American] discourse defines it. Mormonism exacerbates this conflict with its focus on sexuality as the major defining criterion for purity. Sexuality can [therefore] define us further as good Mormon men or cause us to lose our salvation. It represents the degree to which we hold to Church teachings and to which we accept the power of our Church leaders. As a result, we organize anxiety, fear, faith and hope around our penises, our libidos, and our sense of ourselves as gendered and religious beings”.
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God is a jealous God: He wants me to be nonviolent, “unspotted from the world”
Although David Knowlton raises the important issue of male sexuality and problems of masculinity, I question the unreflected LDS use of military and violent language to define our earthly existence, which also defines our relationships with others, with so-called ‘enemies to God’ and opponents to our faith’ and our relationships among ourselves. It is not implicit at all in Mormon discourse that the battle is a nonviolent one and/or that is solely spiritual, leading to the expressed duality of being a messenger of the Gospel of peace as a missionary, while later in life acting as the agent of empire in the war against terrorism.
Let me in a few words explain why I think sexuality is such an important issue from my own nonviolent thinking. God is a jealous God, and when Jesus will ‘marry’ the Church upon his return (as symbolized by our wedding ceremonies where the Bride represents the Church and the Bridegroom represents Jesus), he will expect complete and full loyalty and fidelity and we should cleave to no other and not ‘trust the arm of the flesh’ (the father of contention and violence).
But the loyalty Jesus expects from us is that of nonviolence (the means by which the Kingdom must be established and built) and therefore that we should not offer our souls on the altars of any Empire, be it power, status, nationalism, patriotism, money and riches, or other things that we may covet, exalt above other more precious and eternal things and potentially appropriate through war/violence. Yet, we have sexualized and individualized the discourse around God’s jealousy and lost the perspective of our religious commitment or covenants to peace and nonviolence, to fairness and equality, compassion and charity, justice and solidarity, community and fellowship, non-retaliation and cooperation.
Jesus is the ultimate role model. Be not fooled.
Impressive article, I quite enjoyed it! Keep up the writing! So how far are we all along in the process of making our calling and elections sure? Sure would be nice, of course in the world today one would almost have to be a hermit to achieve the required level of obedience. Or maybe just repent real fast lol.
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