A New, But Different LDS Blog

Last December, Elder M. Russell Ballard, an Apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, urged members of the Church to use new media, like blogs, to help engage in the growing public conversation about the Church and provide information about the faith from those who actually espouse it.

A simple internet search will show quickly that much of the rhetoric readily available about the Church comes from its enemies, and as such is not necessarily the best source for good information. It is prevalent, though, and I think that's some of the reason that Elder Ballard enlisted the aid of Church members in fighting the problem.

Of course, statements from the Church's partisans (like me) is just as liable toward falsehood as those from it enemies, but they nevertheless provide a good counterpoint to what's out there.

When I read Elder Ballard's suggestion that we all use these new media of communications to increase the Church's positive profile, I felt a strong desire to take up that suggestion. I've read and heard a lot of offensive garbage about the Church in my life, and I want to debunk it.

At the same time, though, I didn't feel like one more Mormon website would be helpful. There are already a fairly large number of general-purpose Mormon blogs that attract the attention of people looking for information about the Church of Jesus Christ, its teachings, and its members. Many of those blogs do a fine job of what they do, and so leave me with little desire to compete with them, even if I had the means to launch any sort of effective competition. So I decided to do something more focused.

Choosing a focus for a Mormon blog was somewhat difficult for me. Like most people, I have a variety of interests, and like most religious people, most of my interests are somewhat connected to my religious beliefs. But among all my interests, one stood out as being intrinsically connected to a worldview that I believe lies at the core of the teachings of Jesus Christ through modern revelation.

That worldview is anarchism.

I believe that the fundamental message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, particularly as it has been revealed in our age through Joseph Smith and other modern prophets, is the message of anarchy.

Now, by anarchy, I don't mean a state of chaos. Quite the contrary. The Lord's house is a house of order. I also don't mean a belief in perpetual rebellion and violence — "whiskered men with bombs," as J.R.R. Tolkien (a self-proclaimed anarchist) put it. I mean the message that every single human soul is eternally free and that all bondage of human beings is the result of the lies of the Devil. Anarchy is, I believe, the only proper goal of every Latter-day Saint and the true message of the restored Gospel. Our work as a Church is to help our Lord and Savior remove all forms of force, coercion, bondage, slavery, despotism, tyranny, and control from the whole human family. That includes the elimination of governments and states, but also a great deal more than that. Anarchy is the elimination not just of political despotism, but of all forms of ecclesiastical despotism, economic despotism, industrial despotism, familial despotism, intellectual despotism, psychological despotism, moral despotism, and every other kind of despotism that has ever been conceived in the mind of man. That is, at once, the central message of anarchism and the central message of the Restored Gospel.

So I'll be using this blog to discuss the message of anarchy and the message of the Restored Gospel all at once. My hope is that those who read this blog — whether Latter-day Saints or adherents of any other religion or of no religion — will see the Church of Jesus Christ in a new and different light. The message of anarchy is rarely emphasized in discussions about the Church, but it seems to me to be so central to the Church's teachings that a person can't really understand the Church without understanding the importance of anarchy.

And finally, I should let you know a bit about me. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and have been all my life, as have numerous generations before me. I am a fully believing and committed member of the Church. I am from the American West, and was born and have lived almost my whole life in the land known to the early Mormon Pioneers as Deseret, though usually along the periphery of that land rather than in the center. I am devoted to my family, both the one that gave and taught me life and the one that I have begun to forge as an adult. And as a seriously devout believer in God, I believe that all our political beliefs and philosophies must not merely be informed by our religious beliefs but must in fact be nothing more than an extension of our faith in God.