Introduction

 

This blog will be a continuation of my Google site on Full Circle Theory & Independent Mormonism. For my longer essays and articles see that site. These will be shorter blog post on various topics. 

As an introduction, I will address the criticism I've seen online that to be an "Independent Mormon" and not believe in a priesthood hierarchy or being a saint is an oxymoron. This is what I see people say online. Yet for me I have come to view Mormonism as more than a mere belief system and more of a quasi ethnicity. The best way to explain how I see the ending of priesthood and that being consistent with being an independent Mormon is to turn to the Bible itself: wherein one sees that the priesthood was originally designed for a select number of Israelites in practicing ritualistic Temple sacrifices, based on the idea of God choosing to birth an ethnic people (the Israelites as a tribe). Based on my Full Circle Theory, I see Mormonism typologically restoring this Bible trajectory of a priesthood class offering sacrifices in the Mormon Temple through the "sacrifice" of a plural marriage but that now such plural marriages are only no longer necessary: because the Anglo-Saxon ac Ephraimites (a mixed ethnos), the Mormons in the 1800s, has accomplished the growth of the tribe of Ephraim through the sacrifice of polygamy. And therefore just as most New Testament believing Christians believe that Christ became the last high priest removing the necessity for temple priests of the Old Testament, so too the Independent Mormon position is that today Temple sacrifices of plural marriages are no longer practiced in temples. Therefore, no high priest acting in the role of organizing plural marriage Temple sacrifices as explained in D&C 132, means to me that there is an end of priesthood in general as the higher priesthood in my mind was clearly designed for the practice of plural marriage. Because Mormon scripture is clear that when the priesthood was restored it was based on "the dispensation of Abraham" meaning the Works of Abraham which is plural marriage through the seed of the body of polygamist (Abraham 2:11). The whole point of the higher priesthood was to organize the ethnolinguistic tribe of Anglo-Americans in reproducing the Ephraimite tribe on the American continent through the selective means of plural marriage: where the best genes among the most noblest priesthood holders would produce the highest number of children and establish a new Anglo-American tribe as God's chosen seed and people. 

The fact is that in the 1800s, Joseph Smith sent out a proclamation calling Mormon converts from mostly Britain and Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark and Norway) to migrate to North America in Missouri. My great-grandfathers did just that and came to America to gather to Zion. Then they practiced polygamy and it was their Nordic genes and their bloodline that contributed to the making of the Mormon Peoplehood. 

On my Google Site I explained my core theory on being an independent non-denominational Mormon, which is based in my full circle theory. In brief, this theory explains that basically Mormonism is a literal restitution of all things, that is a repeated cycle of typologies from the Bible and Christiandom itself. What I show in that site is that everything we see in the Bible and in the development and growth of Christianity has co-occurred in Mormonism. Just as there was a Moses that set the Jewish people free, Joseph Smith acted as a new Moses who set Anglo-Saxon Mormons free from Protestant indoctrination in the 1800s. Just as Christianity went from an early stage, a more non-denominational stage and phase, to developing into a constantinian Catholic Church and then became corrupt requiring of reformation and the end of priests for instead independent Christian believers, I think the same thing is repeating itself within Mormonism: with the constant leadership corruption in all the Mormon denominations, for example Warren Jeff's, and the need for more independent Mormons and free thinking to counteract institutional power and corruption. 

So that if one believes in a "higher power" or divine Source, and one can see the same patterns recycling themselves, then one can reasonably theorize as I have done, that Mormonism is repeatimg the same cycle as occurred in Christiandom. So that just as the Bible moves from Moses and a priest class to a "priesthood of all believers" under Paul, and then evolves into Catholic Priests and then the end of Priests and Priesthood with the Protestant Reformation, I see the same pattern in the Mormon restitution of all things. As Mormonism basically repeats the same cycle, beginning with a more Protestant style and worship in the early 1830s and then developing a more hierarchical priesthood like the Catholics in the 1840s, to then Joseph Smith himself stepping down from his role as Prophet-Priest and turning it over to his brother Hyram at the end of his life and saying he's going to focus on being basically a secular King defending American democracy.  So I see in Mormonism the same developments one sees in Christianity, re-occurring in Mormonism. So that in my full circle interpretation one has justification for seeing the end of the priesthood and the need for temple priests. Especially after the ending of polygamy in most LDS sects after 1905. For when one understands that plural marriages were literally performed on a temple altar with a temple priest offering that plural sealing as an act of sacrifice (as D&C 132 explains), then to me it logically follows that no plural merriage, no need for temple priests or a priesthood; that was originally attached to the new and everlasting covenant of plural marriage sealings. So that the priesthood hierarchy governing plural marriage sealings, becomes the means to the ends of selecting for "pure blooded Ephramites" from the north and the making of a Mormon Peoplehood in the 1800s; so that with that accomplished by 1900 (a tight nit ethnolinguistic Mormon Peoplehood), then polygamy became obsolete and no longer needed as a practice. For it had accomplished its usefulness which was the means of the formation of a largely Nordic Anglo-Saxon Mormon population. So that with most of the LDS sects and denominations today moving beyond the origional doctrines of pure blooded Ephraimites, a literal gathering to Zion, the law of consecration, and the rejection plural marriage, this makes priesthood as well obsolete and unnecessary; and leaves room for the interpretation of independent versions of Mormonism, just like the Reformation broke away from Catholic control. 

This leaves room for growing toward your true authentic self apart from any LDS sect and yet appreiacting and respecting your Mormon Heritage; with Joseph Smith acting as a kind of role model for men in the sense of just as he said he was stepping down from the role of prophet to focus on his secular kinship (toward the end of his life), one can interpret that from an independent perspective as no longer being a priest and being the "King of your Castle" so to speak in your own way. 

I also see Mormonism as "mythologically" more in line with the Norse mythology of my Nordic ancestors than with Protestantism. So to be an Independent Mormon allows me to interpret Mormonism more through a Norse theological lens and not be confined with the various Mormon denominations and sects that have chosen to abandon this original more Norse-adjacent Mormonism in the 1800s (e.g. procreating Gods), as they've all wanted to align more with mainstream Catholic and Protestant dogma. As an Independent Mormon, I don't have to agree with that Protestantized way of being Mormon. Yet I can simultaneously respect and honor every other LDS sect and their desire to do that, that is appear and act more like a Protestant or mainstream "Christian Church." If that works for them I fully support them. 

In my view though, as an Independent Mormon, my  identity as a Mormon has more to do with my ethnolinguistic Anglo-American Pioneer heritage than what I believe or don't believe. I can not stop being "Mormon" anymore than someone of Jewish ethnicity can stop being Jewish even if they become secular. In other  words, I'm a DNA Mormon. Just as there are many ways of being Jewish, from Orthodox Judaism to Reform Judaism, etc., I don't see Mormonism as one thing either; and whether one is more of an "Orthojdox" type of Mormon or "Reform" type of Mormon, you are a Mormon in my eyes. 

I also sometimes describe my way of being Mormon as living on the periphery, meaning my way of being Mormon is sometimes attending Mormon social activities on the periphery: going to the cultural hall for activities, maybe the occasional Sunday visit in chapel, but never going in for Bishop's interviews and entering the institutionally controlled system.