Yes! There are Mormons with a Peace Testimony. There are Mormons who aspire to and practice non-resistance, non-violence, and non-attachment. There are Mormons who honor conscientious objection. And they aren't all in the Community of Christ church. Many of them are in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
There are many traditional Peace Churches, or churches with a Peace Testimony, including Quakers, Brethren, Mennonites including Amish, Community of Christ, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Seventh Day Adventists. There are also many churches with a strong tradition of accommodation for Peace Testimony, including Catholicism and Unitarian Universalism. The LDS Church is not traditionally a church with a peace testimony, and it has often been repeated that Latter-day Saints are not conscientious objectors or pacifists.
It can be lonely to find yourself transmutating into a pacifist while all around you it seems like your fellow worshippers are firmly patriotic, militant, and just. But thanks to the internet, Latter-day Saints no longer need to doubt their sanity when they discover that the plain old precious truths taught by Jesus in Judea and Galilee are the real answer to all the troubles in the human heart (or at least the best and fullest expression of the answer to be found in the LDS Standard Works).
When you discover that the Real Gospel is in the Gospels, it can be a little startling in spite of how obvious it sounds. It can also be a little hard to connect with any kind of support and understanding community. Do you convert to Quakerism? Join the Community of Christ? How do you keep your sanity?
Answer: Email me. I have lots of Big-Tent Mormon friends, many of whom have a Peace Testimony. There is nothing like real people, perhaps in your area, with whom you can have dinner or lunch or just an email conversation. You are not alone. It gets better. But you already knew that.
3 comments:
Tom, you don't need to be a mormon to have peace in your heart. I am Christian and I thank God to make me who I am. The best of all is to have friends who you can share your ideas and thoughts eventhough is not a mormon. Because the Bible says "it's better a friend than a brother". It's better to find someone who make you feel appreciation in the effort you do when you write in your blog, and who makes you feel better, because all the work you is worth for somebody!... The same thing happens with our wives because they feel appreciation when you eat the meals they prepared with their effort. Now, when you don't eat those meals, they feel their work didn't worth.
Definitely, Marco! In fact, I am going to read carefully through and edit my post to make sure that what you said is very, very clear. And I love the example you gave about the meals our wives make.
p.s. A million thanks, Marco for your comment that alerted me to the possibility of misunderstanding.
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