When I was a young Mormon boy I listened intently as the adults around me split hairs about whether or not it was appropriate for a young Mormon boy, such as myself, to wear a light blue dress shirt while passing the sacrament to the congregation. They settled on "it's not necessarily inappropriate, but a white shirt is preferred."When I was a young Mormon man, I listened to my fellow young Mormon missionaries discuss the same topic, which had the added complication that many of the men which attended our congregations were too poor to afford clean, sterling-white dress shirts (post-communist Bulgaria in the early 2000's), and such a restriction would result in not allowing very many "locals" the "opportunity" to distribute chunks of white bread and tiny cups of water to the parishioners. The consensus was "It doesn't matter if it's inappropriate to wear a blue shirt or not; what choice do we have? Surely the Lord will understand our predicament."
And so on...
It seems that the blue shirt vs white shirt debate has been going on for generations and resurrects, as it were, every so often. I suppose this argument dies particularly hard because for many Mormons it is the closest they will ever come to theological nuance.
Invariably, whenever this dying horse finds new life, thereby prolonging its obligatory flogging, a secondary debate emerges: culture vs doctrine.
As one who has left the Mormon church, I rarely find the opportunity to join in these debates with believing members. And, for the record, I'm okay with that. But I do recall a few instances discussing philosophy and epistemology with Mormons and this topic has briefly come up. Since it isn't really that important to my overall critique of Mormonism (believers have no compelling reason to claim their positive feelings about the truth claims of the church are, in fact, from god, and, therefore, have no compelling reason to believe the church is true), I usually skip the debate between culture and doctrine in the moment. But I tend find myself thinking about it some time later. It's a curse.
The long and short of my argument is that you can't separate culture from doctrine just because you don't want to appear pedantic over minutia. The culture of the church is a reflection of its doctrine. There is a reason leaders of the church have stressed these seemingly minor things over the pulpit. Because, according to them, it matters. It is a way of gauging one's dedication to the church, and I don't mean this cynically. For church leaders it really is an effective shortcut for worthiness.For example, the Word of Wisdom (Mormonism's rather underwhelming code of health) recommends against the drinking of coffee. As with the blue shirt vs white shirt debate, Mormons have debated the topic of coffee consumption for generations and I know of a few devout believers who look forward to the day when drinking coffee will no longer prevent one from entering the temple and going through the ordinances necessary for one's salvation (that's right, Mormons believe that drinking coffee is a serious enough transgression to warrant god denying the "sinner" eternal salvation). But as more and more studies come out which show that coffee has at least some health benefits (depending on how much sugar and cream one adds to it), more and more Mormons are finding abstinence from the drink to be less and less tenable on the grounds of health and wellness (this is important because Mormons generally believe that their more obscure beliefs will eventually be validated by the scientific community, thus allowing them to smugly taunt non-believers with a hearty "told you so."). And for this reason Mormons are focusing less on the health debate (because, again, they are losing it) and instead tout the point that sometimes god asks mankind to do things for reasons they don't understand as a test of one's faith.
Fair enough, I guess. However, before anyone claims this frail bit of reasoning to be innocuous, keep in mind such reasoning could give way to another Abraham and Issac situation (or, for any Mormons eyeing an apologetic response about the literalness of the Bible, Nephi and Laban (according to the Book of Mormon, god told Nephi to chop off the head of Laban while he was drunk and defenseless, then go to Laban's house, dressed in Laban's presumably blood-soaked clothing, and steal Laban's stuff and kidnap his servant, who Nephi also threatened to kill; and Mormons believe this was a moral thing to do.)), and who knows if round two would yield such a favorable outcome (regardless of the outcome, it was still an immoral thing for god to ask of Abraham or Nephi).
Well, the debate between culture and doctrine seems to have been lit anew as one of Mormonism's very tippy-top leaders, Dallin Oaks, while speaking to a large congregation, reinforced the importance of using the correct hand to partake of the sacrament. Let me restate this. One of god's representatives, a man who claims to be a "prophet, seer and revelator" (whatever that means) and also claims to have such a personal relationship with the resurrected Jesus Christ that he can unequivocally speak on his behalf, chose as his topic to a mass of believers the importance of using your right hand to eat bread and drink water instead of your left hand.And they wonder why members get hung up about blue and white dress shirts...
