Ensign article contradicts FARMS propoganda on MASONS

[_Jersey Girl]

Nevo is an extremely bright, knowledgeable and nice LDS. Be kind to him! We need folks like him on this MB.

Richard

I agree with you, Richard! I love Nevo for the upright and knowledgeable person that he is. I am in the process of sending out vibes to Alf and sansfoy whom I've also admired for years!

"come to the board, come to the board...ooooooohhhhmmmm"

Jersey Girl

[_Sethbag]

Such perfection? Such ingenuity? Are we still talking about the endowment ceremony here?

[_harmony]

Such perfection? Such ingenuity? Are we still talking about the endowment ceremony here?

It's so perfect and ingenious, it's had to be changed more than once. Kinda like the most perfect book ever written.

[_Nevo]

Thanks for the warm welcome, guys. And by all means keep up the fulsome praise! :)

Anyway, returning to the subject of this thread, I think it is overstating the case to claim a "strong if not complete" Masonic influence on the endowment. As Glen Leonard points out in his history of Nauvoo, "the nineteenth-century makeup, teachings, and objectives of Freemasonry differed substantially from the Latter-day Saint endowment. Beyond a few actions and words, which the two groups interpreted differently, resemblances were few . . . . As a fraternal society, Freemasonry looked to earthbound personal improvements and mutual pledges to others and promotions to ranks determined by grading and voting by fellow Masons" (Glen M. Leonard, Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, a People of Promise [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2002], 315-16). This is rather different than what we find in the endowment.

Richard Bushman likewise finds only superficial similarities between Masonry and the endowment:

The Masonic elements that appeared in the temple endowment were embedded in a distinctive context--the Creation instead of the Temple of Solomon, exaltation rather than fraternity, God and Christ, not the Worshipful Master. Temple covenants bound people to God rather than to each other. At the end, the participants entered symbolically into the presence of God. Endowment, Joseph's name for the temple ceremony, connected it to promises made long before his encounter with Freemasonry. . . .

On the surface, the temple resembles the cloistered, brotherly world of the lodges. But the spiritual core of the Nauvoo endowment was not male bonding. By 1843 women were sitting in the ordinance rooms and passing through the rituals. Adam and Eve, a male-female pair, were the representative figures rather than the Masonic hero Hiram Abiff. The aim of the endowment was not male fraternity but the exaltation of husbands and wives.

-- Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 450-51.

That said, there are some interesting connections between Freemasonry and Mormonism in general. Nick Literski lists some of them here.

[_Gazelam]

What I find most supriseing in all of this is that Porter was reading the Ensign! How'd that happen?

[_Mephitus]

Simple Gaz. Once your out and you realize all the crap. Its a pretty good laugh to read one. I've now gotten to the point where i can listen to a talk by GBH and have a good laugh at all the obsurdities.

[_wenglund]

Simple Gaz. Once your out and you realize all the crap. Its a pretty good laugh to read one. I've now gotten to the point where i can listen to a talk by GBH and have a good laugh at all the obsurdities.

There was a time in my youth when I would laugh in harsh disparagement at the thoughts/beliefs and actions/practices of others.

I did so, in part, thinking it somehow a reflection of my supposed superiority--a way of demonstrating to myself that I was somehow above and better than those I was jokingly disparaging.

Later, in a moment of honest introspection, I realized that my laughing at others was really, and ironically, because of my own low self-esteem. I was hurting, and I wanted to hurt others for being seemingly better than I, and I was trying to tear them down to my size--or so I supposed.

In truth, all that my derisive humor accomplished was to lessen me in their eyes as well as my own.

I figured out that if I wanted to think better of myself, I needed to do just the opposite from what I had supposed. I needed to behave in respectible and responsible and functional ways towards others, and I needed to become a better person. In other words, rather than laughing at and tearing others down, I needed to love, value, and respect them, with the desire and healthy expectation that others would return the same. To the extent that I have done so, I have felt better about myself and I have improved my relationships with others.

I hope that those similarly inclined to how I once was, can learn from my past mistakes and use instead the functional strategy I later discovered.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_skippy the dead]

Maybe this is a naïve question, since I haven't yet had the chance to read many articles/books comparing Masonic rituals with the endowment rituals, but how would a church-sanctioned publication be able to really discuss similarities or differences without going into detail about the endowment rites (which would seem to be verboten)? I suppose I should start consulting with the Google gods to see what I can find, but if anybody has some good pointers (other than what's already listed here - those will be my starting points), it would be much appreciated. This topic has piqued my interest.

[_Coggins7]

Simple Gaz. Once your out and you realize all the crap. Its a pretty good laugh to read one. I've now gotten to the point where i can listen to a talk by GBH and have a good laugh at all the obsurdities.

I'll point this out a second time: this is coming from an individual who seriously worships, or claims to seriously worship, ancient Norse dieties like Thor, Wotan, and Freya as if they, well, actually existed. He then paints the LDS church and its theology and philosohpy of life as banal tripe.

A little more circumspection might be in order, one suspects.

[_Mister Scratch]

Simple Gaz. Once your out and you realize all the crap. Its a pretty good laugh to read one. I've now gotten to the point where i can listen to a talk by GBH and have a good laugh at all the obsurdities.

I'll point this out a second time: this is coming from an individual who seriously worships, or claims to seriously worship, ancient Norse dieties like Thor, Wotan, and Freya as if they, well, actually existed. He then paints the LDS church and its theology and philosohpy of life as banal tripe.

A little more circumspection might be in order, one suspects.

Wait a second... You are saying that you don't like Sono's disparagement of Mormonism at the same time you are disparaging Norse mythology? Ah, okay. "Circumspection" indeed, you hypocrite.