Dallin H. Oaks

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Sikhs, Santas and prophets: Do beards symbolize good or bad character?

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Sikhs, Santas and prophets: Do beards symbolize good or bad character?

THE QUESTION:

Santa take note: Do beards symbolize good or bad character?

THE RELIGION GUY'S ANSWER:

Any self-respecting Santa Claus will have actual or artificial paunch, a red suit and, perhaps most important, that luxuriant white beard. Yet notwithstanding shopping-mall Santas and St. Nicholas, as well as St. Nicholas of Myra, the bearded but monk-skinny 4th Century original, some fear that beards symbolize questionable character.

Take the New York Yankees. Please. In 1973, boss George Steinbrenner was perturbed by a player's sloppy appearance during the National Anthem and ever since no player or other employee has been allowed to have a beard or long hair "except for religious reasons." The Yankees presumably borrowed their famed appearance code from the U.S. military and police departments.

And yet. Jesus Christ is portrayed with a beard, since in the 1st Century mostly the upper crust had the time and money to bother with shaving. As for revered secular figures, Abraham Lincoln decided to become America's first bearded president for unknown reasons just after his 1860 victory (though predecessors John Quincy Adams and Martin Van Buren sported serious sideburns).

A cloud of suspicion hovers over chin whiskers in the U.S.-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (nicknamed LDS and, formerly, "Mormon"). Headquarters personnel are almost always clean-shaven, and the same for young male missionary duos unless their district leader happens to allow beards.

This is not, however, a matter of doctrine.


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Question when covering Latter-day Saints: Do we have a Mother in heaven as well as a Father?

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THE QUESTION:

Do we have a Mother in Heaven as well as a Father?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The answer is yes, according to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (long and universally nicknamed “Mormon” though church authorities are now asking journalists not to use that label).

Feminists continually criticize this religion for limiting all of its governing posts to men except for women’s and educational auxiliaries, yet church defenders can argue that this doctrine ennobles the female gender.

Belief in the Heavenly Mother is a wholly unique aspect of the LDS faith.

So is the related assertion in LDS Scripture that God the Father literally “has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man,” thus rejecting the spiritual-only God the Father in traditional Christianity (and similarly in Judaism and Islam). Though official LDS statements do not explore this, it seems logical that the Heavenly Mother would also be embodied.

The church believes each person lives in an unremembered heavenly existence before earthly birth, and was the procreated spirit child of the two heavenly parents. The divine Father and Mother couple fits with the LDS teaching that humans must be married in order to achieve full exaltation in the afterlife.

The Mother is not cited in the Bible nor in the added LDS Scriptures from founding Prophet Joseph Smith Jr. However, the church reports that this was part of Smith’s original teaching. One year after Smith was assassinated in 1844 his polygamous wife Eliza R. Snow affirmed the Mother tenet in a beloved hymn lyric.

“ … In the heav’ns are parents single? / No, the thought makes reason stare! / Truth is reason; truth eternal / tells me I’ve a mother there. / When I leave this frail existence, / When I lay this mortal by, / Father, Mother, may I meet you / in your royal courts on high?”


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Salt Lake Tribune gingerly tackles transgendered Mormons

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Mormons have gotten lots of publicity lately for their efforts to deal with same-sex marriage and the place of homosexuals in church doctrine. And now yet one more issue pokes up its head: Transgendered church members.

Trans issues are the flavor of the moment in media coverage of pop culture and universities, so it’s not too surprising that The Salt Lake Tribune devoted quite a bit of space to this topic on Monday. The report starts thusly:

Sixteen-year-old Grayson Moore had no label, only metaphors, to describe the disconnect he felt between his body and soul.
It was like car sickness, he says, when your eyes and inner ears disagree about whether you are moving.
"It makes you sick," Moore says. "That's the same with gender."
When Moore's mother gave her then-daughter a vocabulary for the feelings -- "gender dysphoria" or transgender -- there followed an immediate sense of relief and recognition.
And, he says, God confirmed that he was not just a tomboy. He was in the wrong body.
Such moments come in the life of all transgender persons -- times when vague feelings of general discomfort with their identity crystallize into that realization.
Annabel Jensen was deciding whether to serve a Mormon mission. Sara Jade Woodhouse was married and had fathered a child.
In these three cases, their Mormonism -- with its emphasis on the physical link between bodies and spirits and its insistence that gender is "eternal" -- initially made it tougher to acknowledge what was happening inside of them.
Since switching genders (though none has had sex-reassignment surgery), all three say they have found psychological and theological peace, even divine approval, and a surprising welcome from their local LDS leaders and congregations.

Next comes a quote from LDS apostle Dallin H. Oaks that -- considering the massive theological problems the Mormons have with changing one’s gender -- is very conciliatory and open to change.


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