Interesting Happenings In Mormons In Australia

From ABC Australia:

Well there’s a storm currently brewing in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Australia, commonly known as the Mormons. Simon Southerton is a molecular biologist at the CSIRO in Canberra, and he’s also a former bishop in the Mormon church. Simon left the church in 1998, after he found he could no longer reconcile his scientific knowledge with his religious beliefs, and last year he published a book that takes issue with a central tenet of Mormon doctrine.

For the past 175 years, the Mormon church has taught that Native Americans and Polynesians are descended from ancient Israelites. Recent DNA research suggests that this is simply wrong: that Native Americans originally came from Siberia, and Polynesians from Asia.

Simon Southerton’s book is entitled ‘Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA and the Mormon Church’, and it presents a solid science-based challenge to the traditional Mormon teaching.

Well the Mormons are now taking action against their wayward former bishop. Simon Southerton hasn’t been to church for seven years, but he’s still officially registered as a church member, and on 31st July, he’ll appear before a church Disciplinary Council, the outcome of which could be formal excommunication.

But what’s strange about the case is that the charge is not apostasy, but adultery. Two years ago, Simon had a relationship during a period of separation from his wife, with whom he’s now reunited. And this raises the question of why the church would bother going ahead with disciplinary proceedings on a purely personal matter against someone who hasn’t darkened the door of the temple since 1998. Simon Southerton thinks the church has a not-very-well-hidden agenda.

Simon Southerton: Most Mormons believe the American Indians and Polynesians for that matter, are largely descended from Israelites who migrated to the Americas centuries before Christ, some about 600 BC and others about 2,000 BC. The belief is based on the Book of Mormon which claims to be an historical account of these maritime Hebrews. The book also claims that the dark skin of Native Americans and Polynesians arose from a curse from God. So I guess in amongst all that stuff that I’ve just said there, are the principal reasons or the motives for me in writing the book. I think the church needs to move away from these awkward beliefs that are viewed by many people to be quite racist.

David Rutledge: Are these beliefs universally accepted within the church though? You get plenty of people within the Christian church for example, who hold on one hand to aversion of the theory of evolution, but they also say that that can be squared with the Book of Genesis, it doesn’t have to be an either/or view. Do you find that same sort of compromise thinking among Mormon believers?

Simon Southerton: I think there’s certainly the same sort of diversity of opinions, but in terms of the public discourse that goes on in church, it’s almost universal that the large majority of their ancestors are from Israel. In terms of the scholars, they hold a huge diversity of opinion themselves. Some of them think that the Book of Mormon events occurred in Malaysia, for example, or some quite outrageously claim that they were in Israel. But there’s a whole diversity of opinion.

David Rutledge: Simon, tell me a bit about your own story because you were a scientists and a member of the Mormon church, indeed a Bishop in the Mormon church for many years, well you were a bishop for two years. How did your science and your faith come to be at odds with each other?

Simon Southerton: What really sparked my difficulties was when I read a church article in 1998 that claimed that scientists who didn’t believe in the Flood were interpreting scientific evidence incorrectly. I was very disappointed by that, because I was a practising bishop spending many hours of my spare time working for the church, and to be labelled as a less-than-faithful member, because I didn’t believe in a universal Flood, was quite disappointing, and I went on the internet, trying to find the thoughts of other faithful Latter Day Saints, and it was while I was in that search for the work of other Mormons talking about the Flood that I stumbled on the DNA research that’s just recently been published on Native Americans. So I struggled for about a period of a week when I was fully aware of the science, and I was just literally forced to compare what I thought I knew by my faith with what I had just learned from the science that I was very familiar with as a molecular biologist. I worked with forest trees and cloned genes and use all of the same techniques that they’re using to study human ancestry. And so I literally went to bed one night a believing Mormon with all these things tossing around in my mind, and woke up the next morning and it was all resolved.

David Rutledge: And that was enough to completely undermine your faith in the religion?

Simon Southerton: Oh, absolutely. The Book of Mormon is known amongst Mormons as, it’s called the “Keystone” of Mormonism. If it falls, a lot of other things fall down around it. It’s going to be very, very difficult for the church and I feel a tremendous amount of empathy for the members struggling with these issues, but the church needs to be honest and face up to what are now clear problems with the Book of Mormon.

David Rutledge: So are you saying that you had the situation where the church is proclaiming certain aspects of doctrine which Mormon scholars quietly believe to be untrue?

Simon Southerton: Exactly. Exactly. If you talk to the senior leaders they say ‘Go and talk to the scholars’. If you go and talk to the scholars, they’ll tell you this new interpretation of the Book of Mormon, which is not publicly supported by the current leaders. In my view, it’s a clear situation where the prophets need to be prophets. They need to take a stand and make declarations of doctrine. Now they’ve done this before, they’ve done this with the issue of polygamy. That’s a doctrine that was ceased. The blacks in the priesthood up until 1978, Africans couldn’t receive the priesthood of the church. They did away with that doctrine. They’re quite capable of doing these sorts of things, but they only do it if there’s sufficient pressure on them to do it. And I guess I’m in a situation here where I have an opportunity to put more pressure on the church to change. And I think in the long run it’ll be better for them, because I know there’s a lot of debate about whether or not they’re Christians, but I know a lot of Mormons and they’re the best people, a lot of them are just the best people that I’ve ever known, and they really are good people and they ought to be accepted in the Christian community, but they have these awkward beliefs that they need to move beyond, I think.

David Rutledge: Let’s turn to the Disciplinary Council proceedings which are now under way. I understand that the church is proceeding against you on the grounds of adultery, rather than apostasy, which is what we’ve been talking about; why is that?

Simon Southerton: Well that’s what I’m quite confused about. Having been a bishop, it’s very, very, unusual for the church to pursue somebody who hasn’t been to church for seven years. If I did that as a bishop, I would spend all of my time holding Disciplinary Councils and disciplining people who aren’t attending, and 60% of the church aren’t attending. And so that’s why it leads me to suspect that they’re doing this for other reasons. There are other motives behind this, and clearly the obvious one would be apostasy. And on the charge of apostasy, I’m afraid I’d have to say I’m quite guilty. But I guess I’m being a bit of a thorn in the side to them at the moment. I don’t have any gripes with the local ears in Canberra, they’re wonderful people. It’s just unfortunate when they get caught up in the wheels of the church that it becomes a little bit more impersonal and my gripe is not with them, it’s principally with the church and the beliefs that I believe need to be changed.

David Rutledge: But why do you think the church wouldn’t be moving on the grounds of apostasy, given that they’d obviously be upset about what you’ve written, both in your book and the postings you’ve made on websites.

Simon Southerton: Certainly they’re very concerned about the sorts of things that I’m writing, but there seems to be a trend occurring, starting up in the last few years, that people who do write books and subsequently invited to Disciplinary Councils, quite often the Council is either called off, or there’s really a non-result. And perhaps the church is now trying to avoid holding Councils on the charge of apostasy, because some of the information that is now available, they would probably prefer those 16 men who sit on the council, they probably prefer them not to hear it because it is so challenging to their faith.

David Rutledge: Information like the scientific evidence that you’ve been bringing forth, that sort of thing?

Simon Southerton: It’s learned that over 99% of Native Americans are descended from Asians is for many members of the church, very threatening. The apologists are there busy dismissing the research, they’ll attack my credibility, they’ll certainly attack my credibility now that a council is called. But when a church court is heard, I would have an opportunity to defend myself on the apostasy charge and I could say quite a lot of things that would be very concerning for the people that were in attendance at Council, because in the church they very rarely hear of things that are negative about the church.

David Rutledge: Well Simon, you’ve been out of the church for some seven years now. Do you particularly care if they excommunicate you?

Simon Southerton: Not really, if it’s on the grounds of apostasy, I’m quite happy to be ex-communicated on those charges.

David Rutledge: You could though, if you like, excommunicate yourself. You could just ask for your name to be taken off the church records, and that would put a stop to the whole thing. Why are you hanging in there?

Simon Southerton: The reason I’m hanging in, is the that the Mormon church doesn’t change unless it gets pressure, and very quietly resigning my membership of the church puts absolutely no pressure on the church to change.

David Rutledge: Well just finally, how would you describe yourself today in terms of your spiritual or religious identification? Would you still call yourself a Christian?

Simon Southerton: I guess to be honest I couldn’t call myself a Christian, and that’s not uncommon for people who have been caught up in the Mormon Church for a long time and then they lose their faith. It is a very, very difficult phase to go through, and I guess to be honest, I probably would regard myself now as a sort of a hopeful Agnostic. I have a lot of time and sympathy and respect for people who hold Christian beliefs, both inside and outside Mormonism. The main thing that I’m concerned about I guess is pushing for the change in the Mormon church which in the end may be good. The church wants to be involved as an equal player in the Christian community, particularly in the US, and I think moves like changing those sort of doctrines, the racist doctrines, will help them move in that direction.

David Rutledge: Simon Southerton, former Mormon bishop, now hopeful Agnostic, and the author of ‘Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA and the Mormon Church’. And I should mention that we approached representatives of the Mormons in Canberra who declined to be interviewed for the program.

That’s it from us this week. Thanks to producer Noel Debien and technical producer Charlie McKune. I’m David Rutledge.

Interesting Happenings In Mormons In Australia

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